My Pleasure

Cooper has loved working at Chick-fil-A this summer. He has just over a week until he starts at-home MTC, so his job is coming to an end. On Friday night we went to visit him at work and cheer him on.

See the Need

I mowed the lawn today. This is usually Cooper's job, but between all the hours he's been working at Chick-fil-a and the crazy rainstorms we've been getting, he hadn't been able to get to it for a while. It took me five hours to do the whole thing, and that's after Cooper had put in about 30 minutes mowing before work.

Our lawn is not flat. The main part of the lawn has some gentle sloping. We also have a significant swale in the back. All of it had to be mowed today. This meant sometimes while mowing uphill, the lawnmower was higher than my head. It was hard physical labor.

By the time I finished at 5:00, I was exhausted and I ached all over. While I was nearing the end I noticed that Topher had come out onto the deck. He set-up some camping chairs, then brought out plates and his water bottle (mine was already on the deck). When I turned off the mower for the last time today, Topher informed me that he'd prepared a picnic for us. "I made you a corn tortilla! I got out a quesadilla from the bag and put cheese on it and cooked it for you."

I did not point out that some of those words were swapped. I love that he saw me working hard and wanted to show his love through an act of service. After I put the lawnmower in the garage and washed my hands, I joined him on the deck. It felt good to sit after such a long day. The company was pretty sweet too.

Timber

The weekend was packed full. Saturday started with an early morning kid choir rehearsal, then a nativity practice, then several hours of yard work. We pulled weeds, gathered clippings, and Bryan chopped down a tree. Also, looking at these pictures reminds me how desperately we need to paint our shutters.

Homeworking

Organized Chaos

We had our summer concert for our kids choir tonight. We added some new performance elements like costumes and wireless mics. It's was chaotic, but it turned out well overall. And I took zero pictures of the actual performance because my phone was being used to run all the audio tracks. I do have these pictures of what the space looked like today after we finished setting up. And hopefully the other parents will share the videos and pictures they took.

Also, Topher was so excited that he set out his choir clothes before he went to school.

Robot Servants

Our washing machine had been having trouble for a while. It would become unbalanced often and the only way to get it to finish a cycle was to lean or sit on it. I've spent quite a bit of time in the last year leaning on a very shaky washing machine. Bryan and I took advantage of President's Day sales and bought a new washer and dryer. It took several weeks for them to be delivered, but that day finally came last Friday. Bryan, having read unfavorable reviews about third party delivery and installation people with whom Costco contracts, opted to just have the old machines hauled away and the new machines deposited in the garage.

I wasn't home when the swap took place. I came back to see all the socks and gloves and other small clothing items that had been trapped under the old machines. I got to work cleaning the space with the intent that Bryan would install the new machines that night. Except then I saw how much that room needed to be painted. And I had leftover paint from the bathroom across the hall.

And that's how I ended up spending my Friday afternoon painting the laundry room. And some of my Saturday.

You can't really tell the difference, but this is after I painted. I can tell though, especially in person.

This is as far as I could paint on this wall, which makes it a little easier to see the contrast of the old (right) and new (left) paint. The other half of our laundry room is a pantry and I didn't want to rehouse the food and shelves while the laundry paraphernalia was taking up space in random parts of the downstairs. It would have been too chaotic. Instead I painted as far as I could and intend to paint the other half someday. Probably not any time soon.

I had done a pretty good job of cleaning up when I had to pause for the evening. That included wrapping my paint brush in plastic wrap so I could keep using it the next day. I painted more on Saturday but had to stop for a bit to work on something else, so the brush went back in the plastic wrap. I was not pleased when I found my brush later in the day, out of its wrap. Topher admitted he had gotten it out. What I didn't notice until the next day was that Topher had tried his hand at painting as well. So, now I get to paint the door.

After three days of painting, replacing all the switches and outlets in the room (Bryan), and a ridiculous number of trips to Home Depot (also Bryan), the new washer and dryer were installed. Bryan spent many hours working on this and Peter was his assistant when it came time to carry them inside. They're beautiful and our clothes feel and smell cleaner.

Of course, we did discover that when the washer spins on high it literally makes the entire house buzz. So instead of only rattling when leaning on the old washer, now we can rattle anywhere in the house, at least for the last ten minutes of the cycle.

We were not expecting that.

As long as we remember to turn down the spin cycle it's fine.

A Garden In Winter

We're nearing the 100th day of school, which means Topher needed to find 100 pieces of something and attach them to a poster. This was assigned as a family project, so I was allowed to help. He named Legos (easy to break and lose), pennies, (I don't think we have 100 pennies), and superheroes (we definitely don't have enough of those) as possible entries. Then I remembered the leftover seed packets from last year's garden. I mentioned them and he loved the idea.

He picked the seeds, did all the counting, and drew all the plants. I wielded the glue gun and wrote the labels. We're quite pleased with the end result.

Sing We All Noel

The busiest part of our weekend happened on Sunday night. Or rather, the part of the weekend that required the most work was on Sunday night. We had our annual interfaith concert. We hosted last year and I was essentially responsible for organizing it. (I realized that I never wrote about it, probably because I was exhausted and overwhelmed and then we had Christmas and COVID and it fell by the wayside.) 

This year we were simply participants. In some ways this was more stressful. I like to plan ahead and have details like date and location figured out early on. Due to some personnel changes at the church that hosted, we didn't have a firm date or location announced until a few weeks before the event took place. There was even some question as to whether or not the concert would happen. Thankfully, it all came together.

There were four music groups that participated: our ward choir, the children's choir that I co-run, a trio from a local Greek Orthodox church, and the Lutheran church that hosted the event. We were the opening act. The hosting music director was new this year and I don't think he expected our choir to be so big. We had thirty singers there on Sunday night, a wonderful group representing our relatively small congregation. Our run through beforehand had been great. But our first number for the actual performance was kind of a mess. The acoustics in the room made it difficult for the pianist and the singers to hear each other. We recovered and our next two songs were much better.

I went from leading the first group to turning the pianist's pages for the second group. Being the page turner is actually more stressful for me than conducting! If I mess up as the conductor I can get back on track pretty quickly. But if I mess up as the page turner everything falls apart. I very nearly had a stumble, but at the last second I discovered I was holding two sheets of paper between my fingers instead of one and flicked them apart, so no harm was done. The kids did a great job.

Because the concert was broadcast on the church's Facebook page, I didn't have anyone record it. I wish I had. The audio on the stream was kind of garbled and doesn't represent how the choir actually sounded. Thankfully Bryan recorded the kids' choir at least. He was singing with the ward choir, otherwise I'm sure he would have recorded that as well.

After all the hard work of getting ready, now I'm kind of sad that we won't be singing those Christmas songs again. Well, we'll sing one of them this coming Sunday, but two of them were only for the concert. Bryan and I are in the process of figuring out how to get a good recording once all the choir members are back from their Christmas vacations.

And I didn't take any pictures that night. Thankfully, my friend took a very important one and sent it to me. The Friday before the concert I sent an invitation into school with Topher and invited his kindergarten teacher. She was also Sophie's kindergarten teacher and another girl in Topher's class sings with the kids' choir, so this teacher had three students performing. And she came! She's really one of the best teachers my children have had and we're so thankful that Topher is in her class. She was so sweet and effusive with her praise of the kids. The next day at school she invited Topher and his friend to talk to the class about the concert they had sung in the night before.

Playing Pretend

A few weeks into the school year Phoebe decided she wanted to audition for the middle school play, a one-act called Boxes. She memorized a monologue and we worked on it to get her ready to try out. She insisted that I walk into the school with her and wait in the hall while she auditioned. There were several other kids there trying out. They chatted and laughed while they waited. Phoebe ran through her audition piece over and over and over instead of visiting.

A few days later she was shocked to learn that she'd been cast as the antagonist, the second largest role in the show.

She's had rehearsals a few days a week after school ever since. And she's spent a lot of time worrying about her ability to perform the role the way the director wanted. She was concerned that all the other kids were getting notes on things to change, but she wasn't. Phoebe was concerned that the teacher wasn't correcting her because she didn't want to hurt her feelings. She had a hard time believing that it was because there was nothing to correct.

Tonight was opening night and our family went to support Phoebe. She was AMAZING! She played a mean, bitter character with a lot of trauma. In other words, someone very different from who she is in real life. And she was so natural and believable on stage. Her performance was so powerful that I teared up at the end. It was a joy to watch her act!

Initiative

Something amazing happened on Saturday. It was another beautiful day and one of the trees in our backyard had dropped most of its leaves the week before. Bryan and I agreed that we needed to gather all those leaves onto the street in front of our house so the city could collect them. It was chilly in the morning, and we needed to focus on chores inside anyway. We designated the afternoon as the ideal time to work in the yard.

Bryan had some errands that he needed to run. He left around lunch and the rest of us continued our Saturday chores (or avoidance of chores). After Bryan had been gone about an hour I looked out the window and saw Peter using the leaf blower in the backyard. I went outside and asked if Bryan had called or texted asking him to do that. No, he just knew it needed to be done and got started on it.

Let me repeat that.

HE JUST KNEW IT NEEDED TO BE DONE AND GOT STARTED ON IT!

You guys, this is a major milestone. I'm not being snarky or sarcastic at all. I'm truly thrilled that he took initiative and got started ON HIS OWN.

It was a big day.

Eventually everyone else went to join him.

Fall Perfection

Saturday was gorgeous and warm. Bryan and I spent several hours outside working in the yard (both of us) and power washing the sidewalk (Bryan, see the example in the first picture below). While we worked Cooper, Sophie, and Topher got lots of fresh air and exercise. Cooper and Sophie modified baseball to work for two people and Topher learned how to climb the tree!

We might get snow this week, so I love that we were able to take advantage of this beautiful day.

Let It Be

Between the first two Saturday sessions of General Conference we all went outside to do yardwork. Bryan manned the edger, Peter ran the lawnmower, and the rest of us attacked the weeds. Our big goal was to remove the small trees that had grown in the shade of our giant pine tree. It took us a bit to get there as we gathered sticks and pulled weeds in other parts of the yard. We finally began work under the tree. We'd been pulling weeds for about five minutes when Sophie announced that she'd found something.

Yeah, that's poison ivy. I'm impressed that she recognized it right away. Our work in the yard was cut short and everyone that had worked under the tree had to go leave their shoes and clothes in the garage and then go shower, just in case we'd come in contact with it.

We'll leave the removal to a professional.

We Are the Choir

In April of this year I was chatting with a friend while we waited for our teenagers to finish their midweek activity at church. The previous summer a woman who had directed a children's choir in California had moved into our ward. My friend and I were bemoaning the fact that we didn't have a children's choir nearby that our kids could be part of and wishing that our new friend would start one. On a whim I said, "We could start a choir. You could be the musical director and I could be in charge of choreography and whatever dramatic elements we wanted." We kind of laughed about the possibility and moved on to discuss other things.

A few days later she texted me "I'm actually a bit excited about the idea of putting together a children's music group. Is that something you'd really want to do? If so, let's stew on it a little."

I responded, "I'm game. 😁"

Then life went on and we didn't talk about it again until a month and a half later. That's when she texted and said she wanted us to start the choir. That was the official beginning of our little group. Over the next few weeks we texted and sent Marco Polos back and forth several times a day as we made choices about what the choir would look like. We chose a name, paid a graphic designer to make a logo for us, picked a few songs to start with, and decided on a practice time.

By the beginning of June we not only had a plan, we also had a choir. We had spread the word amongst the moms in both wards that meet in our building. There had been lots of interest and we had about sixteen kids signed up to sing. Our first rehearsal was the first Monday of summer break. We gathered the kids, passed out their music folders, introduced our first song, and sang.

And then my family went out of town for three and a half weeks and missed the next several practices.

We got back into town one day before our first performance.

Thankfully the girls had been practicing as we traveled. With a quick pickup practice the night before, they were ready to jump back in and sing. The kids sang three patriotic songs for a combined ward 4th of July picnic between the two congregations that meet in our building. They did a great job!

Over the summer we kept practicing once a week. The other director had to miss three weeks in a row, so I took over as the music director for that time. When we were both there sometimes we would split the kids up and I would teach the melody in one room while she taught the harmony in another room. We introduced musical terms and taught about stage presence and what to do if you're nervous and don't want to perform. We focused on the learning aspect of the choir, not just how they sounded and what they looked like. Several of the families involved traveled during the summer as well, so we never knew how big a group we would have each week.

As the end of summer neared we knew we needed to pick a night for the kids to perform what they'd been working on. We found a handful of dates that worked for both of us and sent them out to the parents. Thankfully, there was one night that worked for all the singers. That left us with a program to plan out. The kids had learned six songs over the summer, which was great. However, it wasn't quite enough for a concert. We discussed trying to teach them a few more simple songs but decided against that. Instead we invited the kids in the choir to put together solo or small group numbers that they could perform as part of the concert. They were thrilled!

These were the songs the kids learned as a choir, along with their run time.

We had our first official concert a week ago. Since this isn't a business venture we were able to use our church building for our practices and the concert. However, our building is little and doesn't have a stage. We created a performance space by gathering the rolling chalkboards and whiteboards in the building and setting them up behind the kids. We also rolled out a carpet under where the kids would be standing to minimize foot sounds. 

Another dilemma was the volume of the piano. Our pianist is a talented and enthusiastic fifteen year old. He's so enthusiastic that he plays the piano at top volume and the piano that was available to us doesn't have a damper pedal. During our dress rehearsal we discovered that he was drowning out the singers. After some brainstorming, a little internet research, and a trip to Walmart, we were able to dampen the piano a sufficient amount. We stuffed an old mattress topper into the back of the piano and then covered it with a moving blanket. Apparently a moving blanket is essentially the same thing as an acoustic blanket, but significantly less expensive and easier to obtain. I pulled the blanket back to show the padding underneath for this picture, but it was tucked and taped and hidden during the concert.

We met at the church the night before the concert and moved out stacks of extra chairs from the gym to a side classroom. That's also when we quieted the piano. There's a dedicated group of pickleball players that uses the gym most mornings, so we couldn't set anything else up that night. Our plan was to meet the next evening two hours before the concert to set up the stage area and the seating for the audience.

The next morning I got a text from my co-director. She had just gotten a message from one of those pickleball players who knew about the concert. They couldn't play their regular game because a repairman was currently using the space to fix the three sets of floor-to-ceiling accordion doors that divide the gym from the chapel and split the rest of the big room into smaller rooms. According to the message, he wasn't sure that he would be done by our 7pm start time.

I had already been planning to stop by the church that morning to drop something off, so I headed over to chat with the repairman. I found him sitting in the last row of the chapel, looking at the big room and the work ahead of him. I said hello and quickly explained that the room had been double-booked with the repair and the concert. I asked what his plan was so that we could adjust ours if needed. I was very kind and never demanded that he finish his task so we could have the room. When he heard what we needed he said he would fix the back curtain first since that would be the quickest project and was where our makeshift stage would need to be. Then he would move to the more difficult and time-consuming task of fixing the curtain between the gym and the chapel. Thankfully the middle set of curtains didn't need to be touched. He said he might be done by 5pm, but couldn't make any promises. I thanked him and said I would pray that he would have motivation (something he told me he was lacking) and insight as to how to fix the curtains.

When we arrived at 5 o'clock he was gone and the repairs were complete!

One of the moms from the choir had volunteered to organize refreshments. She came to setup a few tables before we got there and decided to set up some of the chairs as well. We were so thankful for her help. It took some of the load off our shoulders. 

We had the room setup in time for our singers to warmup and run through a few numbers before the show. I directed one number, She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain, since it was mainly an acting song. The rest of the night I acted as stage manager and crew. I handed instruments (ukulele, drum, violin) when they were needed, moved music stands and chairs, cued our two prerecorded accompaniments, and at one point made sure the mic didn't fall out of it's stand and land on the floor. My co-director actually directed most of the songs. Oh, and I was the page turner for the pianist. Two of our songs were quite long, thirteen and seventeen pages each.

The order of songs was as follows:

Colonel Bogey's (You're a Grand Old Flag) - a choir number that included a kazoo section

Inchworm - a choir number, from the movie Hans Christian Andersen

Big Rock Candy Mountain - a fun solo from a young woman in the choir who is one of our smiliest singers and also has a giant voice

Simple Gift - a beautiful cello solo by one of the young men in the choir

This Land Is Your Land - a choir song accompanied by one of our singers on the ukulele

She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain - the choir song that I directed, Phoebe played percussion for comedic effect during one verse

How Far I'll Go - a trio from a set of sisters

Wellerman - a sea shanty sung by two brothers and accompanied by a hand drum

When I Grow Up - one of our more ambitious choir numbers, it had lots of syncopation, Phoebe was one of the soloists!

Popular - a great solo by one of Sophie's best friends, she has a big, beautiful voice

Musette - a lovely violin solo from another young man in the choir

Tomorrow - a fantastic duet by Sophie and that same friend who sang Popular

A Million Dream - the choir's grand finale, Sophie was a soloist on this song!

The kids did a fantastic job! They smiled and sang, they remembered to sit and stand quietly during the small group numbers, they made it to the microphone on time for each of their solos. It was a successful first concert!

And now we're planning for Christmas.

We were so focused the night of the concert that we failed to take a group picture. But we did get one after our dress rehearsal (minus the actual official choir shirts so they would stay clean for the concert) a few days before. We're missing three of our singers here, and Sophie is a little hidden, but this is most of the group!

Not-So-Secret Sauce

A week and a half ago I got a text from a friend in our ward saying they had too many apples on their tree and offered to let us come pick what we wanted. She warned me that they weren't good for eating, but made great applesauce. I took the four younger kids and some plastic bags and we visited while we picked apples. We left many apples that we couldn't reach and somehow still came home with 42 pounds of apples!

I found a no sugar, instant pot applesauce recipe and wanted to get started right away, but I didn't have all the needed equipment. Originally I was going to use our apple peeler/corer, then cook the sliced apples and mash them in the blender. But I wanted to use as much of the apple as possible, so instead I ordered an applesauce maker from Amazon and then waited for it to be delivered.

A few days after gathering the apples, we finally started the applesauce making. The last time I made applesauce was before Instant Pots were a thing. This was soooooo much nicer and more efficient than cooking the apples on the stove. 

Several of the kids thought these were potatoes.

Even with the Instant Pots speeding the process along, this took several hours. I was down to the point of cooking the last batch when I made myself call it a night, well after midnight. This very cool tool did make the process easier. 

The next morning we cooked and mashed the last of the apples. I had a few helpers. 

Those 42 pounds of apples made 12 quarts of applesauce. I had discovered that my trusty canner that had been taking up space in the basement for many years could not be used on our glass cooktop. So instead of canning the applesauce right away, I stored it all in the fridge in the garage and waited for a new, flatbottomed canner to be delivered by amazon.

I was thrilled when it arrived, it was a thing of beauty. For real life. And then we looked up the manufacturer information on our stove top and found out that the pot was so big it could possibly crack the stove. Ugh. We returned it to Amazon.

Thankfully, we have a restaurant supply store nearby. They don't sell canners, but they do sell giant stock pots and steamer racks, and that's how I cobbled together a canner that would fit on my stove. I have ordered a proper canning rack to fit this pot, but it won't be here for a few weeks and I needed to get that applesauce canned while it was still edible.

Yesterday was the day! The hardest thing about the canning was that I had to warm the applesauce back up and I could only heat 4 quarts at a time in my second biggest pot on my second biggest burner. It took most of the day, but we ended up with 8 quarts and 8 pints. It's delicious, those apples really do make excellent applesauce.

A Fresh Coat of Paint

We rearranged our great room to make it more kid friendly for cousins to visit (a babyproofed section, blocked off from other, less baby-friendly areas) and I realized I never wrote about updating this space. I'd been wanting to paint the room since we moved in, but it wasn't high on the priority list. Finally back in March I decided I was tired of staring at beige walls and old yellowed light fixtures. I bought several paint samples, painted stripes on the walls to compare colors, then Bryan and I made some choices. I painted the room in a weekend, it took longer to switch out the light fixtures and buy and install the TV cabinet and storage cupboards. We still need to add knobs for the furniture and a top for the TV cabinet.

I love the way it turned out.

Before:

In progress:

I've now painted so many walls that I don't need to use tape, I can just paint the edge freehand. It's a longer process, but seems to give a better result. We went for the bold, dark blue because we thought it went well with the brick. We chose a warm gray for the other walls because we were concerned if we painted them all dark blue the room would be too heavy. That cupboard in the corner is holding all our board games and most of our art and school supplies. I love that we can tuck them away. Once we put the extra cubbies (brought down from Topher's room to create the baby barrier) away, most of the visual clutter in the room will be gone.

Eventually I'll hang pictures back on the walls, but for now I'm happy to see their pretty painted surfaces.