Weekend

Yesterday morning, I taught lessons and helped Mikaela get warmed up and ready for her ACT audition.  Then the girls and I went to Stephanie's baby shower! It was the most darling shower I've ever been to, with a children's book theme.  We sat a the Thomas the Train table!

Guests were asked to bring a children's book in lieu of a card.

 Stephanie's little boy is due to arrive in June, and after the lovely shower, I think she will be much more ready.  It was such a sweet afternoon, and lovely to see so many friends from our days at Bloomington 1st Naz.  We wish the best to Stephanie and her little one!

 Last evening, we all hung out together in the living room.  Sylvia asked Jeremy to play some Guess Who? with her, and they were quite entertaining as she taught him how!

Annah was doing homework, and trying to focus with the rest of us goofing around.

Caeden was playing on his iPod.

I also downloaded the Heads-Up app, and we all cracked each other up with that!

Today after church, the kids had Beacon youth band lunch/practice, so Jeremy and I had lunch at McD's.  We drove there separately because we had different places to go after.  However, we both ended up at Meijer later and did some tag-team shopping.  We decided to check out together for maximum mPerks benefits, and also so Jeremy could take all the groceries home. He bought a bag of our favorite pretzel pieces, and when I got home this evening, I realized he had bought a little bag for me too.  We call them crack pretzels, because once you start eating them you can't stop until the bag is gone.  They are yummy!

Art, Everyday, and Friends

My crocheting business has had quite a big lull since February.  I've been crocheting, but having a hard time finding time to get good photos and especially finding it difficult to do much marketing.  For now, I'm ok with how things are, but I think sometime in the future I will need to really find a more specific focus.

This week, I made a couple more silky metallic shawls.

The kids caught me taking a picture of them eating supper, and had to make protesting faces. I still like to document those every day things, like their protesting faces.  

Today, Annah had the honor of attending the Heart of Illinois Conference Art Festival. 

Annah's art teacher chose her charcoal drawing of a violin tailpiece to be exhibited!

Annah really enjoyed the spending day with friends taking in lots of amazing art and learning!

She attended two hands-on workshops, which she really enjoyed.  In fact, she was so excited about one, that she came home and immediately gathered supplies to do some more experimenting with the new techniques she learned! 

 This evening, the kids and I went to Calvary Baptist Academy to watch our friends the Kellers in their school musical!

I hung out with our friend Bekah for a bit while Ang took baby Ty for a diaper change. Bekah taught me the proper way to flash the peace sign for a selfie.

Then our friend Celia joined us!

Adam played Schroeder, Jillian was Peppermint Patty, and Samuel was Floyd. We have loved this show for a long time, and Calvary's production was really, really great!  We thoroughly enjoyed it!!!

All 5 Lopshires were up and at 'em early this Saturday morning.  The guys are volunteering for another local wrestling team at a tournament they're hosting. Jeremy was the guy who input stats for trackwrestling.com, and Caeden was mostly a spectator.

We girls rode a school bus to Decatur for the high school band and choir to perform at Millikin University for IHSA Organizational Contest.

We arrived early and loitered in a lobby for quite a while...

We didn't get to see much of campus, but the band performed in a beautiful performance hall!

The band performed well, and received an Excellent (II) rating.

Mr. Marchese asked Sylvia to play horn with the high school band this semester, as there is only one other horn player, who is a trumpet convert. She has been in a few rehearsals, and has enjoyed the experience very much.  I was surprised she was nervous to play today, especially with all the encouragement she has received from the high schoolers.

(The only time you can see her is when Mr. Marchese signals for the band to stand to be acknowledged, because she always sits right in front of the director and her music stand covers her face.)

Since I accompany the choir, I don't have any pictures of video of them performing, but snapped this one during their warmup in the basement of the lovely church in which we performed.

Annah had a solo in the choir's first song, O Sifuni Mungu, and both girls played their string instruments for Radioactive. It was a lovely place to perform, with nice acoustics.  I did feel terrible for Sylvia though, as she was squeezed into a tiny space between the front edge of the stage and the edge of the piano.  She didn't have room to extend her arm for good bowing, and also kept running her bow into the Easter lillies which were still lining the front of the stage.  There are unique challenges with every performance experience, and she made the best of it.  It was fun to get to perform in a new place.  And, I got to play on two beautiful pianos here too!

The bus ride back...

Snoozy sisters

The guys had left the wrestling tournament around lunchtime, and Jeremy took Caeden to Samuel's birthday party--bowling at ISU!  He had an absolute blast.

The girls and I went straight into Normal to check out the String Day sale at the Music Shoppe.

Annah tested several violin bows--both carbon fiber and wood.  

Since the sale was so significant, she did get a nice new carbon fiber bow that was more than $90 off!

We are planning to make a huge purchase in the coming months.  For about 2 years we have known Sylvia needs a full size cello, and the day is coming when she will have her own.  The 3/4 she has been playing for 3 years belongs to ISU, and we are so grateful to have been borrowing it for free all this time.  

Sylvia spent about an hour trying out several of the cellos that had been brought in especially for the string sale today.  

She said she would like to sit in a circle of cellos like this and play all day any day!

She loves this instrument SO much!!!

Friend Therapy

This morning Dawn brought Griffin and Ryder over, and we just sat and had coffee and chatted for a few hours.

It was a wonderful morning, so good for my soul, and made my heart so happy.

Blessing Ceremony

This evening I had the privilege of playing piano for a Blessing Ceremony for the Faith In Action ministry in Bloomington.  Jessica, who is the mother of one of my piano students works for FIA, and was in charge of planning the ceremony/banquet at Calvary United Methodist Church, and asked me to play.

I played a prelude, 2 worship songs, and a postlude on their gorgeous Steinway piano, and thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. 

The mission of FIA is so beautiful:

Faith in Action provides spiritual, physical, and emotional support to seniors 60 years and over and their caregivers to maintain independence, dignity, and improved quality of life. We accomplish this through an interfaith network of volunteers, congregations and community organizations.

And the purpose of this evening's Blessing Ceremony was to thank and pray over the FIA volunteers. About 20+ churches in town have FIA volunteers who make up this ministry. After the worship music, some of the pastors of those churches read scripture about service, then many pastors came to the front of the sanctuary and welcomed all of the volunteers to come forward to have their hands blessed.  It was a short ceremony, but such a beautiful one.  

I'm thankful for this ministry in our community, and for the opportunity to witness these blessings!

Puppy Therapy

It is really tough to be a teenager. Friendships and relationships of all kinds keep getting more complicated. You start to realize there will always be people doing mean things, and it is up to you to react with kindness and forgiveness.  

Ugh. Junior high has been such an emotional and social struggle for Sylvia, and she is so looking forward to going to high school.  However, this past week, Annah has been the one struggling with friendships and not knowing how to express her feelings in words, and feeling like she has been [emotionally] run over by a truck.  It's rough.  

Both girls looked so lovely in their new clothes and shoes yesterday morning, and I wanted a picture of them.  This was their first reaction.  "We don't have time for that, Mom!  We need to get to the bus!" Daughters, if you didn't waste the time protesting and complaining, it would have been over in 20 seconds!

Fortunately, they did decide to cooperate, and now they both are so glad we took this picture!
My precious girls.  So loved.

During the school day today, I got a call from the school counselor.  She was calling about Caeden! Yesterday when he came home visibly upset. He didn't want to talk in great detail about it, but said that basically he lost "all" of his friends.  

With all of the emotional uproar, I decided we needed a little bit of happy distraction!  Kaitlyn, Hunter, and Ainsley had been over for piano lessons in the morning, and repeatedly invited us to come see their 8 puppies before they go off to their new homes. This was perfect timing. I texted Jenee' this afternoon to ask if we could come see their little 3-week-olds for a little bit.  When she said yes, I told the kids to go get in the car immediately!

We enjoyed about an hour of puppy therapy, holding and petting the fluffy sweet little yellow pups, and visiting with Jenee' and the kids.

It was pretty great therapy, and everyone was smiling and much more relaxed after about an hour! 

Puppy kisses!!!

It's a heart full of puppy love!!!

What an incredible blessing!!!
I am so grateful to Jenee' for making time for us in their very busy day!!!

What I didn't realize was that Caeden was still dealing with his emotions about what happened yesterday when he left for school this morning...

Basically, the gist of it is...Junior high girls keep asking him to "go out."  He is 12 and (and more mature than most in this instance) very aware that he is not ready for a romantic relationship. (Thank you, Jesus!) So, when these girls [send other kids to] ask him out, he just says, "No."
Embarrassed, broken-hearted junior high girls freak out, create dramatic stories, spread rumors, get classmates to choose sides and make fun of him...chaos ensues.  

So today in English class he wrote a poem about it his feelings and sent it to everyone in the entire 6th grade as an apology.  He was also "staring off into space" and not talking to anyone in class, and freaked out a substitute teacher who didn't know him.  Another student showed the sub Caeden's poem, and she sent someone immediately to get the counselor.  Caeden was taken to the office to talk with counselor and principal, but didn't want to name names of kids who were picking on him because he didn't think they were doing it on purpose.  The counselor had a good long chat with him, gave him candy, and he said he was fine to go back to class.  Then she called me, and we had a good discussion about how wonderful Caeden is, and how much we love him.  He was fine when he got home.
It really is tough growing up.  I'm so thankful we have good people around us who help us through the icky stuff!