Called Away

Last Saturday Bryan and I got a text from a member of the Bishopric asking if we could meet the next day shortly before church. Bryan has been without a calling (a responsibility at church) for a while, so I figured they were going to extend a new calling to him. I also wondered if I would be released as the choir director since I've had that calling for a long time.

We met with the Bishopric counselor right after my one practice with the pianist for our instant choir and right before church started. They did give Bryan a new job. He was asked to team teach a particularly rowdy Primary class of boys. I was surprised when the counselor said that I was getting a new calling as well, but first he would need to release me from one of the two I already had. My guess was wrong. I'm still the choir director (for now). However, I am no longer the Young Women's advisor.

I was so nervous about the impending instant choir that I said yes to the calling change and didn't think too much about it. Once the choir was finished with their number and I was sitting back down on our pew my brain started processing what had happened and all the things I would miss. 

I loved the two and a half years that I served in that calling. It wasn't always easy, most of it was over a screen or distanced outside. I had very different opinions and views from the YW president, and that led to some unhappy meetings. But I still loved it. I loved getting to know the girls. I loved the women in the presidency that always welcomed me to meetings and valued my input. I loved that those women kept me connected to my ward through the years we were at home. They helped me feel less isolated during that very hard time. I loved getting to teach the youth. I even loved attending Wednesday night activities and firesides (spoken like a true extrovert). But, more than anything, I loved that year that Phoebe and I got to spend in YW together. That was a special gift.

Once I had listed through everything I would miss, I had a hard time keeping my emotions in check. I let them bubble up just a tiny bit at church. Once we got home, all those feelings came out of my eyes and ran down my cheeks. Phoebe and I had a solid cry together, she was just as sad as I was.

As I was talking through all my thoughts with Bryan he made an interesting observation. He pointed out that I didn't love my own experience in the YW program when I was a teenager. It was a cliquish group and I was consistently on the outside. Nearly all our activities were sports or crafts, things that don't really bring me joy, but I still always attended. Most of the girls were much cooler than me, which translated to me always going to my assigned classes while they wandered the halls of the church building. I will take being uncool and going to class over being cool and truant any day of the week, but it was still lonely. Bryan was right, I didn't love that experience. Then he pointed out that maybe my time in this role was so I would come to love YW.

I think he's right.

Yesterday I taught my final YW lesson. It was spiritual and emotional, especially at the end when the young woman saying the closing prayer said she was thankful for what I've taught them and promptly started crying. The YW gave me a goodbye card and lots of hugs when the prayer was over. And I was sustained in my new calling as a Relief Society teacher. That means I get to teach the moms of the girls I've taught for the last few years. I hope all those women are ready for a teacher with a lot of energy and a firm belief in class participation, because that's what they're about to get.

A Room of Her Own

Sophie's art assignment last week was to create a bedroom out of cardboard. Thankfully we had plenty of boxes on hand. Here's her final result. Her ideal bedroom includes a bookcase and a cat poster. My favorite part is the desk chair.

Full Disclosure

When Topher woke up yesterday morning I was in the middle of checking how many school assignments each kid had for the day. He climbed onto my bed for a snuggle and looked at my computer screen. I explained what I was doing. He saw Phoebe's picture on the school page and the following exchange took place:

Topher: Oh, Phoebe has (small pause) eight things to do.

Me: (surprised at the correct number) Yes, she does. How did you know that?

Topher: Because I- I'm a genius.

Woman's Blind Bluff

One of Bryan's Christmas gifts was a new suit. It's been about ten years since he bought one and one of the buttons recently broke in half on his old suit. It's a good thing the weather is cold because he could get away with wearing a sweater to church instead of his suit jacket. He picked the new suit out, ordered it, tried it on when it arrived, and handed it to me to wrap. The pants needed to be hemmed, but he figured that wouldn't be hard to arrange.

Then he learned it would take six weeks to tailor and would cost roughly a third of the price of the suit. He started talking about hemming it himself and I asked if he needed me to do it. We've since learned that he thought I was offering to help when in reality I was asking if I needed to do it because I have more sewing experience. He said yes. Did I know how to hem anything? No, no I did not. But I knew his mom, a sewing wizard, was coming after Christmas so maybe I could ask her to teach me how.

Getting COVID threw a wrench in most of our plans that week, but on the last day they were here she patiently walked me through how to do a blind hem using my sewing machine. After she left I practiced a few times on some scrap fabric since I was worried about ruining Bryan's new suit. On Saturday night I finally got brave enough to actually hem the pants. And it worked! He wore his new suit to church the next day.

Here's a picture of the settings needed to do a blind hem, because I will definitely forget without this reminder. Shari, thank you for teaching me a new skill!

Instant Choir

Last Wednesday night I got a text from a member of the Bishopric. He let me and the Ward Music Coordinator know that the upcoming Sunday was Ward Conference. The Stake leaders had asked for a special musical number for the Conference, but the Bishop felt that wasn't enough time to prepare. The counselor that reached out to us had been to a "ward once and the choir director just invited anyone to come sing a hymn as a musical number." He thought that would be a great solution for Sunday.

The music coordinator gently said we should have been alerted to the need for a musical number a few weeks ago, then wisely deferred to me to make the choice. After more back and forth between the two of them, I chimed in. What he was asking for was an instant choir. It looks effortless, but requires work behind the scenes. I said it would depend on finding a song that would work, getting a pianist to agree on short notice, and reaching out to a few musical families to make sure that at least a few singers would join us for the "impromptu" number. He said that sounded good.

And then my head exploded.

No, not really, but it was stressful making a choir number happen on short notice and with no real practice from the singers. I looked to my own sheet music collection and found a Hymnplicity arrangement of Our Savior's Love that would work. My friend who plays the piano said yes to accompanying and I got the sheet music to her on Thursday afternoon.

One of the draws of Hymnplicity songs is that you should be able to use the hymnbook and copy a half sheet of paper to slip into the hymnal with the directions for the singers. It tells them if one line is sung only by the women or if the whole group should sing the melody in unison. This works, in theory. It's fine if you've at least had a chance to run through the song once or twice. But since we wouldn't be singing together at all until we were on the stand with an audience, I didn't think it would work.

My solution was to spend most of Friday night and Saturday morning editing sheet music together. Once upon a time the church had this amazing online hymnbook. You could look up a hymn, then transpose it into any key you needed. Since the arrangement we were using had two key changes, I really wanted that feature. But that tool relied on Flash, a program that doesn't work anymore, so my plan to just transpose and print didn't work. My next solution involved me spending several hours inputting all the notes the choir needed to sing, plus words and some dynamics, into a music writing program called MuseScore. When I was almost done with that I mentioned my dilemma to Bryan. And, being the technological wizard that he is, he found the replacement program for transposing, currently being beta tested. He transposed and shared the needed music with me.

At that point I shifted gears and used Kami to edit the PDFs of the transposed music. Then I printed it out and physically cut and pasted the three verses together, with directions found in the accompaniment, but not in the hymnal version.

After scanning and running it through a final digital edit, I printed off a copy of the music and stuck it in the choir bag.

The next morning, Sunday, I had to take Cooper to church early for a meeting. I used that hour and a half before church started to copy, hole punch, and highlight twenty-two copies of the song. I finished at 11:01, just in time to meet the pianist for our single run-through. This is the first page of the copy that the singers were handed in the few minutes before church started.

I spent the entire first half of the meeting alternating between stressing and praying. Seriously. I sat in the pew, mentally going through the cues I needed to give the choir and sometimes discreetly beating the time with my right hand. I'm sure the talk that came before the song was very nice, but I'm afraid I didn't hear much of it.

And then it was time.

I had no idea who would actually get up. The Bishop announced the song, saying we hadn't practiced at all and that anyone was welcome to join, even if they had never sung with the choir before. I had handed out most of my choir notebooks, but had the rest ready to go just in case we needed them.

We definitely needed them.

Bryan, who was one of the singers, estimated there were about forty people that joined us to sing, including the Stake President who admitted in his talk afterward that he was so excited he got swept up in the moment. From my vantage point, I would guess it was closer to forty-five. Indeed, there were people that had never sung with us before. I made sure the altos and tenors and basses were in the right spots (the sopranos all seemed to know where to go), mouthed a few quick directions ("the women start, watch me!"), and signaled the pianist to begin.

Was it perfect? No. I was very aware that the altos were somehow overpowering the other parts, while the men seemed to mostly sing the melody, even when they weren't supposed to. However, enough of the singers knew their parts and sang them well that most of the congregation probably couldn't hear what I heard. It wasn't polished, but I don't think anyone expected it to be. The singers watched me enough that all entrances and cutoffs were clean, a trick that doesn't always happen in a well rehearsed song. I think we were all anxious enough about how the number was going to go down that we paid extra close attention.

A shared sense of relief washed over the choir when we finished. Several of the participants told me afterward how well they thought it went. The Stake President started his remarks by saying he loved getting to hear the song in surround sound. The best comment was shared with me by one of our basses. He happened to be sitting next to a man who is not a member of our church and was visiting our congregation that day. Once the song was over and the bass had returned to his seat, the visitor leaned over and said, "There is no way that you all just got up there and sang that without practicing."

I'm relieved it went so well. I realize we probably could have sung something right out of the hymnal that would have saved me hours of work, but I guess my brain wanted to do this the hard way. My biggest concern at this point is that the Stake President had such a wonderful experience that he'll begin requesting instant choirs from all the congregations (we have twelve wards in our stake) he visits. I hope that doesn't happen.

Do You Want to Draw a Snowman?

Our preschool theme for the beginning of January is winter. We've read books about winter, watched YouTube videos that teach about the formation of snow flakes and how animals hibernate, and made a snowman out of playdoh. Topher also drew a picture of a snowman. He asked me to take a picture of his drawing. Then another picture. And another. And another. And another. I guess it's important to capture all those expressions.

Doppelganger

I enjoy looking through the photo memories that Google puts together. The spotlights on individuals are especially fun, particularly the collage that usually comes at the end. Yesterday I got a spotlight on Peter that took a surprising turn. A little more than halfway through the subject of the pictures changed from Peter to Topher. I know they look alike, but I didn't realize they were so similar that Google wouldn't be able to tell them apart.

Fort-itude

Filling In the Gaps

Due to our self-imposed quarantine, we didn't get to meet Legend and Zariah in person until last May. We stopped at their house on the way back from the Washington D.C. Temple open house and had an outside, distanced visit. Because of the rules about not posting pictures of foster children on social media, I didn't write about the visit. But I did take a few pictures!

This one has most of us, the second one has Legend off in the distance.

We saw them again briefly in June for another quick outside visit, but I didn't get any pictures of the kids. Then we got to spend Thanksgiving with them. Here are a few pictures I took during that visit. We've loved each chance we've had to spend time with them.

Officially Cousins

Almost two years ago my brother Jordan and his wife Leah were expecting their first baby. They had also gone through the long process of becoming foster parents. Shortly after being approved (maybe the next day?), they got a call that a brother (age five) and sister (about three months) needed a home. That brother and sister have been with them ever since. And, as of last Friday morning, they are officially part of their family. Before Friday I hadn't been able to share any information about them on the blog, but now I can!

Our little family planned to travel the two and a half hours down to Maryland to see Legend and Zariah join their family. I let Leah know that some of us had had COVID and let them make the call on if we would be there or not. She said it was fine as long as we tested the kids right before we left. The hearing was early on Friday morning, so we got a hotel for Thursday night. That meant the COVID tests would need to be on Thursday afternoon.

Unfortunately, Sophie and Peter both tested positive minutes before we were supposed to leave. Peter was upset. Sophie was devastated. Bryan already had to stay home to work, so they stayed at home with him. I double checked that it was still okay for the rest of us to come. Then I got on the road with Cooper, Phoebe, and Topher. We made it to the hotel a little after eight and finally convinced Topher to go to sleep about an hour later.  

I was determined not to be late, but traveling with other people meant that I didn't have total control over their behavior. After more stressing and pushing on my part than was pleasant, we left for the courthouse on Friday morning with thirty minutes to make a twenty minute drive. After one missed turn, we parked, paid the meter, and ran into the courthouse with minutes to spare. After going through security and wandering around we discovered we couldn't find them. Frantic, I went back to the security guards and asked where the adoptions were taking place. That's how we discovered we were in the wrong building.

The white van in this picture is ours, that's where we parked. See the big brown building on the left? That's the courthouse we went into first. See the smaller brown building on the right? That's where we should have been.

We ran. We ran so fast Topher lost a shoe and I told Cooper to just pick it up and keep going, we didn't have time to stop to put it back on. We had to run all the way around the building before we found an open door. We were now a few minutes past when the hearing was supposed to take place. I was so upset at the thought that we might miss it. We finally made our way through a second round of metal detectors and security and went up the elevator. We were ushered into the courtroom, just behind another latecomer. We sat down just in time to be told to stand for the judge.

We made it!

A few minutes later the judge announced that Legend and Zariah now share Jordan, Leah, and Maverick's last name. I know mine weren't the only teary eyes in the room.

I'm thrilled to be able to share this picture of their family of five. I'm so happy that I officially have a new niece and nephew and that my kids have two new cousins, especially since we've already considered them family for a long time.

They had a lot of people that came to the hearing to support them that morning. We're so thankful we could be among them. We love you guys!