Suzuki Harp Institute 2016

After we got back from the cabin, we stayed in Utah for Suzuki Institute. I was doing teacher training for Book 3 and Willa was starting as a pre-twinkler. Institute was in Logan at USU again this year. Last time, I commuted back and forth and it worked really well. It's about an hour and fifteen minute drive most days. I had two different people I could carpool with and my classes ended around 3 or 4, so I got home in the late afternoon and felt like I could play with the girls and relax. I thought it would be very similar this year...I was so so so so so wrong.

The main thing was they put my training classes in the afternoon, from 2-5:30 p.m. In addition to my classes, I had to observe so many hours of classes and lessons, then I had to attend Willa's classes and help her practice. I could combine a little, but I needed so many hours of Bk 3, and Willa was Bk 1. Willa's first class started at 10 a.m. (and one morning, we arrived to observe a class at 9:00 a.m.). With the long commute, we weren't getting home until almost 7:00 p.m., then we had to leave by 8:30 a.m. or earlier. Poor Willa, she was exhausted. When we got home, she just need a release and her and June wanted to play and relax together. We'd finally force them to bed around 8 or 8:30 and then she would SLEEP. Most mornings, I had to drag her out of bed at 8:15 sometimes straight to the car to drive up. I felt so bad for her and I was totally exhausted. In hindsight, we should have stayed up on campus like most people, but once you factor in the costs of the Institute plus lodging and food, it really added up. Plus, I didn't want to be away from June for the whole week. Still, it would have been better and next time we will do that - if we make it another time.

Willa's first harp lesson with Delaine. Learning from one of the masters.

 A much needed ice cream break at the creamery.

Kindermusik

Group lesson/repertoire class, she's on the far left so it's hard to see her. This was her favorite class to play with the other little girls. Little girls are very silly.

Here is a picture from the final concert. Every day, Willa had master class - which is a small class of three girls where each got about 10-15 minute mini-lesson each day. Then she had repertoire class - where a bigger group of 5-6 girls played through all the songs as a group with the teacher. Older kids had a theory class and a technique class, but since Willa was brand new, she had Kindermusik.

Honestly, I was just so exhausted and it was hard to be positive the whole week. I don't know if it was all the commuting or other stuff going on, but I had a hard time being as excited and enjoying myself as I have had in times past.

The final concert was the biggest disappointment and letdown. All week, the kids are practicing all the pieces and polishing them in preparation for this concert. In Willa's repertoire class the teacher would say, "This is how we are going to play this piece in the concert. Let's practice doing this. Let's practice our chair bows..." etc. So the whole week, there was this expectation for the concert. The classes were M-Th, then the concert was Friday morning around 10 or 11 a.m. and then everything was over. So Friday, our last day to drive, we drove up with my mom and June for the concert. Willa wore her favorite dress and was very excited. I was a little confused because normally there is a rehearsal onstage beforehand and we hadn't been told anything about that. We got there early and went in the auditorium and there was definitely a rehearsal going on. However, Willa's harp was not on the stage. Another harp was missing, the other little girl from her masterclass. I tried to ask several people in charge and kept getting the brush off. "I'm not sure about that. I'm not in charge of that. Ask this person..." Meanwhile, Willa starts freaking out, "Where is my harp? Am I going to be in the concert?"

Finally, I found Pam, who taught the repertoire class. I asked her where Willa and Lydia's harps were. She said that since they were just pre-twinklers, they weren't going to be onstage, they were going to bring them up to show how to bow and then they could sit and clap the rhythms with her at the front of the stage where everyone else played. What?!!!! Now, I've been to my fair share of Suzuki concerts and I could really care less that Willa gets her moment to shine onstage. However, she had been told all week that she was going to be in a concert and she was excited and expecting it. I also found Lydia's family (Lydia and Willa were in classes together all week). They had no idea that their daughter wouldn't be playing in the concert either. In fact, the dad had taken off work and driven the two hours up from Provo with other family members just to hear her play in the concert.

I explained all this to Pam and tried to ask who had made this decision (she didn't know because she had been at a rehearsal with the older kids). I explained how extremely disappointed the girls were and begged if we could please put their two harps in the back where there was obviously enough space for them. She agreed and we hurried and added the harps. Then Pam sat with the girls and talked them through what they would do. They were able to sit onstage and play Taka Taka Jump Jump with everyone and sit through the Twinkles (they should have just let them play the Twinkles because they both had been practicing them in their group classes). Then, she led them to sit on the front of the stage and clap the rhythms for the more difficult songs. It was a good compromise, I think the girls felt a little disappointed, but overall didn't really know what was going on and were happy to be able to be onstage with their harps.

I'm still pretty annoyed about the incident and I don't know how it all started, but it is my good harp friends who run the whole shebang, so I'm definitely going to talk to them about it. One thing Pam mentioned was that they were going to be switching from right hand to left hand between Twinkle variations, and the pre-twinklers hadn't practiced that. Well, that's about the lamest excuse I've heard. Isn't Suzuki about including everyone and every child can? You're telling me that you are going to exclude two little girls who have been attending classes and practicing all week, (who can see their fellow classmates onstage!) because you're scared that they will mess up right hand and left hand? As if anyone could actually hear that?!

As you can see, it's a sensitive topic. It all worked out, but only because I pushed for it. I've been to so many of these things and know everyone, so I felt comfortable going up and asking questions and pushing a little. Poor Lydia's family is brand new to all of this. They had no idea what to do. They were just standing there blankly when we figured out that they weren't going to let the girls play. I told them to sit tight and then I went to find the right people to work it out. If I hadn't been there, they wouldn't have done anything and it would have been such a disappointing end to a fun week. Again, I could care less about one more Suzuki concert. Willa's part was small, it wasn't earth-shattering. If they didn't want the pre-twinklers to play in the concert, then they should have explained that at the very beginning. Willa would have been fine knowing that the concert was for older kids, but that she had a special role teaching about the bow and clapping the rhythms. She would have been totally fine. But to go the entire week in these larger classes talking to them about the concert and what they are going to play and how they will sit and act... and then to not let them do it? It was just wrong. I don't think it was anything nefarious, I think it was bad planning and communication on all the levels. I should clarify, Willa and Lydia were the only official "pre-twinklers" the other girls in their classes were a little further along in the book, but not by much, but enough to not be "pre-twinklers" and they were onstage. So it was very confusing for Willa and Lydia to see their classmates onstage ready to play and not be included, especially when they did play almost all of the same songs.

If the week hadn't been exhausting enough, I just had a sour taste after that concert. For a minute, when I first talked to Pam and thought they weren't going to let her play, I just sat down and started crying. Just those silent, fat tears that won't start coming. I think I was just so emotional and exhausted from the whole week that this straw broke the camel's back. Thankfully, I pulled myself together and then went to fight for them to play.

On a happier note, I really did enjoy my teacher training. We had a new teacher trainer, Kathy Kienzle instead of MaryKay or Delaine. She was great and I feel like I learned a lot. I always enjoy meeting the other teacher trainees in the class, and my friend Tara had come up from Vegas to take the class too.

A lot of the original ShruDe students were there as well, either doing teacher training or taking their kids to Institute. We all got a picture together with ShruDe.

From L-R:Makay, Bianca, MiKell, Kimberly, me, ShruDe, Nicole, Anamae, Cate, and Maria. Sadly, Alyssa - whose idea the photo was, got the day mixed up and didn't make it! I have so many memories of these ladies, it is always so fun to see them.

The Cabin, July 2016

Forgive me for the time hop, but I've skipped a lot of fun adventures the past few months that I want to remember in the future. This year, Ryan couldn't join us for the cabin, but we had the next best thing... the Thalmans! Robert had to work too, so Kim drove up with the kids. It was PERFECT. The girls had best friends to play with. That first night, we thought they'd never go to sleep.

We kayaked down the river. I took Willa in a double kayak, Kim took Bridgett, but then Abby took a single kayak and my dad was supposed to stay right with her in case she needed help, but he got distracted talking to people as we pushed into the river and so he didn't catch up with us until we were halfway through and past all the rough patches. Typical, if you know my dad and how friendly he is with everyone and also how oblivious he is to time :).

 We pulled out the mega tube, which is always an effort. The girls went without June earlier, this time she wanted to go...and lasted about three minutes. Willa wanted to get off too, and then my dad could really whip Bridgett and Abby around without the two scaredy-cats on board.

 On a cool day, we went and fed the fish at Big Springs and took a small nature walk. The weather was on the cooler side, but we did have one or two nice hot days for the boat.

The whole group as we were packing up and getting ready to head out. Kudos to Kim for driving back to Vegas on her own with three kids! It was a great, great trip, as usual. My girls were a lot more daring this year - they liked the four-wheelers, did the wave-runners and the boat with few complaints and sometimes even begged for them.

The new house

I haven't blogged in a while, I don't feel like cleaning the kitchen, Ryan is at track practice, so it seems like a good time to write a little bit about the house. Tomorrow will be our two week anniversary of moving in. We still can't believe we have this beautiful house and yard and live in this nice area. The move went well, we hired a couple of guys to come help Ryan. They loaded up the entire house, drove to the new house, and unloaded all in about four hours. It was money well spent. Why not use the EQ after Ryan has helped and organized countless moves during his 2+ years as EQP? Well, we had tons of moves in our last ward and lots of time it was crazy stuff like once a lady drove into the church parking lot on a Wednesday night with her UHaul and said she just arrived from Colorado and a friend said if she came to this church parking lot on a Wednesday night people would be able to help her unload her truck. What?!! Another time, someone called for help and he asked when they were picking up the truck and they were like, "Truck? I need to get a truck?" He planned on just asking a few close friends to help, but then I checked the price on movers and it was reasonable and we ended up moving on a Tuesday morning because we were delayed getting keys to the house, which delayed the painters, which delayed the carpet cleaner and regular cleaners, which delayed the pest control guy...." Plus, Ryan has been super busy at work so I wanted movers to do the whole move in case he couldn't even get off.

Anyway, the first night we were excited and pumped and had trouble sleeping, especially with all the new house sounds. There was a huge lightening storm during the night (I was awake, but Ryan had fallen asleep) Ryan woke up later and was really paranoid because he could hear this major drip and thought that something was leaking on the house. I told him it had just rained, so he went out on the balcony and there was a tiny hole in the rain gutter right there. Ha.

We are still living in total chaos, I feel like. Ryan's dad came out right in the beginning for over a week and just tinkered around. He fixed a leaking toilet, got all the outlets working, and mucked out the yard that has been neglected for 2+ years. Very importantly, he fixed all the sprinklers and found some major leaks and repaired those too. At 9:00 pm one night he was still working hard, using the dremel to carve down a piece of metal to insert into our shower door. My parents also came too and my dad spent an entire day pruning down the yard even more. They also brought a small Uhaul trailer of everything from my bedroom at their house. Sheesh, you'd think after 35 years they'd be resigned to keep my stuff forever.

Willa also started kindergarten! Yay! I'll post about that later. The pool as been the perfect after school activity. We come home and she has some time to swim and unwind from it all. Having a pool is very awesome at the moment. The kitchen sink looks out at it through the backyard and it's so peaceful and nice. I love that the girls can jump in and swim without having to pack anything up and go anywhere. Plus, the previous owner built a little shower outside, so we finally hooked that up this weekend. When they are done swimming, we just wash them off and wash their hair right there and then straight into pajamas. It's so efficient!

We are still mostly furniture-less and will remain so for a long time. It's a struggle to make things fit when they don't really fit, if that makes sense. The toys are all over the place right now. I need new systems and a routine. I try to clean and tackle the last remaining boxes in the garage but sometimes I just stand in a stupor unsure where to start. But, we're almost there. We love everything so far and even though it's a new part of town and new neighborhood, we find that it's very nice and actually prefer it up here because it's so quiet and peaceful.

And that's enough procrastinating for now, I've got to clean the kitchen. Plus, this post is already longer than I expected it to be!

After just a few days of swimming in the pool, June is already doing so much better! She can almost swim the width of the pool. Ryan was doing "swim lessons" with her on Saturday and she decided she was "tired of kicking" and just liked to float instead. I love that she's getting a good feel for the water.

Dinner after swimming.

What we've been up to

I need to post the pictures from the cabin, but so much is going on right now. Like...we are buying a house! And, Willa had eye surgery on the day we ended up signing! Could life get more stressful and/or exciting? Long story very short, we put an offer on a short sale wayyyy back in November 2015. There were multiple lenders on the property so the whole process was much more complicated and drawn out. One lender would get around to doing something and finally send it off to the second lender, then something would go stale before the second lender got around to approving something, so there would be a setback....repeat this over and over until the end of June when the two lenders agreed on everything except $400!!! One lender wanted $400 more and the other refused. Finally, our realtor said that HE would pay the $400. And then we had a deal!

There have still been setbacks and we don't have keys yet, another long story. But hopefully in the next few weeks we will be enjoying this:

The house has been vacant for a year, so the vegetation needs a lot of TLC. We had to get the pool cleaned up and fixed... which is another long story. Basically, the bank told us they wouldn't approve the loan until the swamp pool was cleaned up. But the buyer was walking away, so we had to pay for it ourselves. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as expensive as it could have been. We had a scare when we called the pool repair guys, apparently this type of pool should never be emptied and there was a chance that the pool could be a total loss! They filled it up asap and then did an inspection and said it was still in really good condition. Even though it was annoying that the bank required it all to be fixed, we are grateful because what if we had bought the house and had found out we had worthless hole in the ground!

On the other side of the excitement spectrum, we had a regular eye exam for Willa two weeks ago. We usually go two or three times a year to check her alignment. Her one eye always struggles to straighten as much as the doctor wants. It starts straight but as the doctor stresses it, it starts turning inward. There's a condition where this just happens when the eye is fatigued and it's not a big deal, but with Willa we noticed that she was losing her depth perception, which is a sign that it's turning inward most of the time. When we first started going to this doctor two years ago, Willa could identify almost all the 3D images. Now, she gets the one big one, but hardly any of the others. Last appointment she just got two and that was good for her. So we would go back every few months and check the eye and tweak the prescription, but finally we are at the strongest prescription she can have and it still wasn't great so the doctor recommended surgery. (Ryan wonders if her eye was worse because she spend so many summer hours in the pool without her glasses on.) It was a 60-90 minute procedure and the doctor went in and loosened the muscle that was pulling the eye in. Sometimes she does two muscles on one eye, but more often she does one muscle on each eye. Why did she need to do two muscles? I'm not sure, but something about balance in the universe. 

I wasn't sure what to expect with this surgery except that coming out of anesthesia would be bad. I was hopeful that recovery would be easy because the doctor said Tylenol would be enough and didn't prescribe narcotics for after the surgery. Well....after experiencing it, I'm going to go ahead and say it was way rougher than her broken arm surgery. The eyes are just so sensitive. The arm was really painful the first time and she did need the narcotics. But with the eyes, they are just irrititated and scratchy and it's not an area where you can really comfort her. Plus, we have to do antibiotic eye drops four times a day for two weeks, which is pretty miserable for a five year old. She's getting used to it, but still hates it. I think she's starting to realize that the drops help her eyes feel better. If she would take regular eye drops it would be way more comfortable for her too, but she was NOT interested in additional drops. The main comfort is a wet cooling cloth that she keeps by her side. When her eyes really start to bother her she presses it on her eyes and it provides some relief. Pre-op:

For being so brave and going to surgery Willa finally earned the Elsa Frozen Fever Lego castle that she has been eyeing and earning a job chart for for months. It ended up being the best distraction the first two days since bright lights and the tv were irritating for her eyes. The prize for two weeks of eye drops? A mermaid fin. I feel so bad that she's been through so much at such a young age. When I told her about the surgery she started crying and asked if they were going to put a mask on her face again (for the anesthesia). It's so sad that she remembered enough from the previous surgery two years ago to be afraid of specific things. Since she had just turned four for her last surgery and she's still five, she asked me if she has to have a surgery for every year old she is. I hope not!!

Driving home from the surgery center. Her eyelids were all swollen :(.

Day 2, almost finished with her Legos. It was such a great distraction!

Her eyes are really bloody on the inside, but today she complained the least amount so far and didn't need her cold cloth nearly as much. The sad news? No swimming for a month!!!! I wanted to get the surgery done before kindergarten but if I had known about the swimming I might have waited for October! Oh well, we will survive. But pretty ironic that we signed for the house with that beautiful pool the same day as the surgery.

Yearning

Odd Squad: The Movie came out today. For those unfamiliar with Odd Squad, let's just say it's the best show ever in the history of children's television. Even I like to watch it. It's brilliant!

Anyway, it finally came out (on PBS kids) and I turned it on for Willa. She was so excited she told me, "I have been yearning to see this!!! That's fancy for really, really wanting something."

So this post is dedicated to Odd Squad and Fancy Nancy for fun shows and fancy words.

4th of July and more

We just got home yesterday after two weeks in Utah. The first week we were up at cabin and the Thalmans joined us so it was extra fun. The second week, I commuted back and forth each day from Centerville to Logan for Suzuki Institute. It was EXHAUSTING! I was doing Book 3 teacher training for me and was having Willa start harp as a pre-twinkler. It was way more intense having both my stuff and her stuff and the driving just added to the stress. Ideally, I should have just stayed up there in the dorms like most everyone else, but I wanted to save money and didn't want to not see June that long. Anyway, we got home last night and I went to bed at 8:45. I think I could finally relax and let go for a bit.

Of course, we did the Centerville 4th of July parade. Since Ryan couldn't make it, I decided not to run the 5k this year either. It was nice to have extra time to get ready in the morning and not be rushed. Two of my very best friends growing up - our two back door neighbors made it this year. Stephenie lives in Phoenix and was visiting with her three big kids. Alyson came and her twins had their first parade experience. We used to all watch the parade together as little kids growing up.

More candy!

My mom got their skirts from Costco. Aren't they adorable?!!

Willa has a piano recital and earns a trophy

We got news that Willa had passed the LVMTA musicianship exam a week before her piano recital. Normally, The teacher would have passed out the trophies at the recital, but this year there wasn't enough time between the two events. I tried to warn Willa that the trophy might not be there yet. The trophy was the sine qua non of the musicianship exam. She has been dreaming and talking and salivating about having her own trophy since she saw other kids get them at the piano recital last year. The idea of earning her very own was extremely motivating.

For this year's recital she played Pumpkin Boogie and was very sweet. Here is the video.

After the recital the teacher had her own awards to give out to students who had volunteered with their talent and played in church or somewhere else like that. But she called Willa up very first and had ordered this large trophy with a pink base just for her. She gave Willa an award for practicing so well. Willa does practice really well and has progressed a lot because of it, but I'm not sure if it was trophy material. Still, it was really sweet of her teacher to do it and Willa was over the moon. Her trophy was bigger than the others and pink and she whispered to me that she had been looking at it the whole recital (all the awards were set up on a little table on the side) and hoping it was for her.

Getting the award.

Sister Thornton has been an amazing teacher. I've learned so much from her just sitting in on lessons. Here's a fun fact, her husband (who passed away) did all the murals for the Salt Lake temple during the last remodel in the 60's or 70's. The Church brought her up a few months ago with his journals to meet with a church historian.

Rebecca got her a Jasmine lego set as a gift for the recital. Legos are almost as exciting as trophies, Willa loved it and has repeatedly put it together all by herself and keeps saying how much she loves it and that she is so glad Aunt Rebecca got it for her.

A few weeks later, the LVTMA trophies were ready. They also had her written exams, so I could look at how she did. She made a bunch of mistakes during the listening portion, which were really easy, so her teacher thinks she just didn't understand the questions and what to do at that point. My favorite is that she phonetically spelled her last name on the paper. It just illustrates where we are in life right now.

The real trophy.