Music and Milestones

 Remember during track season when I thought life would slow down after track ended? HAHAHA, apparently that was a myth I told myself to get me through the season. This was our first week after track season and let me tell you, it was not slow. I mean, maybe it was a little less busy thanks to the absence of daily track practice, but factor in the post-track season fatigue plus we rolled right into daily cross country conditioning, plus an hour or two of yardwork each day, and it all added up to an exhausting week. But that is life--it doesn't slow down. It's not like I actually want to not do all of the activities we've been doing (except maybe the weeding--I could live with less weeds), but wow, everything seems to happen all at once! 

This week was ALL of the music performances for all the kids, and we spent a total of seven hours at our kids' concerts, recitals, and music awards. SEVEN HOURS. That's 3 kids, 4 instruments, and 4 performances in 5 days. Plus that pesky separate music awards night. I also scheduled the kids' dentist appointments for this week (since we'd "have more time" after track season--hah), and Jay's annual doctor checkup, both of which required driving and sitting and waiting. 

Amidst the musical craze, we also had three major milestones: Jay got his driving permit, Amber ate curry for dinner, and Jeff turned 42! I also registered Jay for driver's ed class. 

Saying "Jay got his driving permit" makes it sound like he simply went out and procured permission to drive a motor vehicle. What actually happened was I spent an hour on Wednesday digging deep into the state transportation website to pre-register Jay and unravel the various documents and procedures involved in obtaining a teenage driver's permit. Then I assembled the four identity-establishing documents and made the appointment at the DMV. (Who knew that an official high school transcript can count as a "B-list document" to prove a minor's identity? Now I know!) After Jay's dentist appointment on Thursday morning, I took him to the DMV where my parental preparation paid off and the process proceeded smoothly and quickly. On our way out of the DMV, Jay joked "I should probably get a different wallet to replace the blue velcro one with the shark picture on it that I got when I was seven." I laughed, and then paused, noticing that we were right by a Ross store. We turned around, went into Ross, and bought Jay a more grown-up wallet to hold his permit when it is mailed to him in 2 weeks. 

"Do you want to drive back to school?" I asked Jay. (We were only half a mile from the high school--our small town DMV is the best.)

"Ummm I don't think I'm ready to drive in traffic yet," Jay replied, and I didn't force him, because honestly I didn't feel fully ready either! 

Rewind to the music: Tuesday was Rose's 7th grade orchestra concert, which was followed (after an intermission) by Jay's high school orchestra concert. Each grade performs separately for the middle school orchestras, so we sat through both the 6th grade and 8th grade orchestras as well. Rose counted and played her cello well! Jay looked like a total cool cucumber playing and plucking his string bass. We got fresh donuts from Pepe's Bakery on the way home to celebrate. 

On Thursday evening, Rose had her middle school band concert. All five of us attended the concert so again, we got Pepe's pastries on the way home to celebrate surviving another concert. 

Friday night was the high school band and orchestra awards night, which ended up lasting over 90 minutes. Jay did not receive an award, but he didn't know if he would receive one or not beforehand, so we went and sat and clapped for 90 minutes anyways. (Side note: Friday morning, I weeded for 2 hours and also played the piano for 45 minutes, which made my hands and forearms were limp with fatigue, which made clapping for 90 minutes nearly unbearable. It wasn't a hold your applause to the end type of event; people clapped after every single name was called! I did the wimpiest claps of all time.)

Saturday was Jeff's 42nd birthday.  After Jeff opened and appreciated his self-selected birthday gifts of a TV for the barn and two other electronic items for the barn, we went outside and burned our large pile of accumulated weeds. Once I had showered off the skin permeating smoke smell, I got to work in the kitchen concocting Jeff's requested birthday dinner. I worked for nearly 2 hours in the kitchen making the dinner. First, I made the pizza dough. While the dough was rising, I whipped up a batch of brownies and a pan of blondies (Jeff insisted that we have blondies too so I could eat them, which was nice except I had to make two desserts instead of one.) Then I cut up a pound of stretchy nasty fatty rubbery raw bacon and cooked it. While the bacon cooked, I cut up a watermelon into bite sized squares. Then it was time to put the pizza dough onto pans. I baked the three pizza crusts while cooking the bacon and mushrooms. Then I grated some Swiss cheese and cleaned up my mess, setting everything in order so I could quickly assemble and bake the pizzas when we got back from the piano recital. WHEW, that was a lot.

Rose and Amber's piano recital was at 3:30pm on Saturday afternoon. Amber played her song just like she always plays it. No matter how much I worked with her, she always transformed half of the quarter notes into eighth notes, but she was cute and confident up there anyways. Rose was so ready and had her long Minuet in G, both parts, memorized so well that she rushed into it headlong and fumbled her fingers a few times. She was sad that she didn't play it as well as she has played it at home, but I told her she still sounded good--most of the song was perfect. Once the piano recital hour was up, we were officially done with a very intense long week of musical performances. 

A picturesque view along the canal road west of our house, taken on my Memorial Day run.

I wore patriotic socks on my run on Memorial Day.

A view of our partially weeded back of house and driveway. UGH, I have been slaving on these weeds.

Rose's 7th grade orchestra! Rose is the 2nd cello from the right on the second row, barely visible.

Jay's underclassmen orchestra combined with the upperclassmen orchestra for their concert. Jay is on the far right with his bass.

Jay is the only bass player who's taller than his instrument.

Waiting at Jay's annual doctor checkup. I took this picture as a reminder of all the sitting and waiting that I did this week.

We always force Amber to eat at least one bite of whatever meal I cook, and she actually liked the curry I made on Wednesday, so she added more to her plain bowl of rice.

Jay with his temporary paper permit outside the DMV. This is next level parenting right here. I'm not sure I'm cut out for it.

Rose's middle school band concert: she's in the front row on the left, playing the clarinet like a pro. In one of their songs, Rose was the only clarinet who knew the notes well enough to play, and she played out so well! Rose has really enjoyed learning different instruments this year.

Post-concert donuts! Fresh maple frosted donut from Pepe's spoke to my soul this week.

Amber, following along in the Book of Mormon while we listened to the audio of a chapter on the gospel library app. Wild hair, intense expression: this is Amber at age 9.5.

Amber has inherited a bunch of Jay's old socks, and she really likes the tall ones. This pair features R2D2 from Star Wars. Amber uses Jay's old elementary school R2D2 lunchbox too, so she was happy to have her socks match her lunchbox on Friday.

Jumping for joy.

More weeding: those green piles are all of the weeds I pulled along that long row of blackberries. There were so many--this picture makes the weed piles look so tiny. Trust me, this was a solid 2 hours of work. We haven't figured out how to spray for weeds up close to the blackberries without killing the berry plants. Hence the weeding.

Friday afternoon library visit with my Amber girl! She requested a library selfie again.

Birthday Jeff! He ordered himself a scope camera on a bendy thing so he can feed it into the wall and see what's back there when he does wiring projects in the barn.

Rose thought waking up at 8am on a Saturday was pretty hard. Sleeping beauty.

Jeff, admiring his handiwork--he mounted his birthday TV on the wall in the barn, to be used for watching race footage with his various teams.

The burn pile. It blazed hot but also smoked a lot because there was still plenty of moisture in some of the weeds and grass clippings.

We torched our Christmas tree!

Jay has been saving his mowing money for months and finally saved up enough to buy himself this virtual reality headset. He was pretty excited about it.

Amber, playing "In Dreams" from Lord of the Rings at the piano recital.

Rose, playing Minuet in G at the recital. She said she was nervous and her shaky hands made it hard to play. I told her I could totally relate to the feeling.

Two of the 3 pizzas I made for Jeff's birthday dinner were gone before I remembered to take a picture of my handiwork. Everyone chowed down and loved the pizza (except Amber, who choked down half a piece and then filled up on watermelon and brownies). I could use a week or three off from cooking after this intense Saturday in the kitchen, haha. But seriously.

I like taking a picture of the kids with the birthday parent. The kids said "Mom, you need to be in this picture too!"

We love Jeff!