Driving around—a lot

Last week, we had a crazy music weekend. Bianca's orchestra was invited to audition for America's Got Talent, so they had to add some extra practices in to learn a pop song—Smooth Criminal. So Bianca had to go downtown SLC Friday night for practice, then get up early Saturday to go back for regular practice.

Portia had her annual Suzuki Cello Graduation, so I had to drive Portia separately to SLC, while Eric picked up Bianca and took her to viola lessons, then down to Orem for the actual America's Got Talent audition. Portia's graduation went well. She only played Minuet Number 2, even though she had already passed off the Book Two graduation piece (Bourree) as well. Just minutes before Portia had to go up on the stage to play, I looked down and realized Portia had mismatched boots on—one of Bianca's boots, one of hers. I shook my head and sent Portia up there, just hoping no one else noticed.

Portia did play very well. Here she is with the group that graduated Minuet Number 2.

We won't know for a while if Bianca's orchestra will get to be on TV. We do think that would be pretty darn cool though.

We had tickets to the Utah Symphony for Saturday night, but I realized that if we had gone, we would have driven to Salt Lake City 5 times in about a 24-hour period (I gave them to my friend who was celebrating her anniversary this weekend). Still, it was a lot of driving. Hopefully someday all this driving will be worth it.

A New Year and a Funeral

This year, we got some unexpected company after Christmas when Eric's grandma Maurice Clay (Eric's mother's mom) died. She had just turned 99 right before Christmas. It wasn't a surprise really, but it was still hard for Eric and his family. So, Eric's sister Mindy came and stayed with her kids at our house, while his parents and brother stayed with Bruce and Joanie. They drove through the night and arrived in Utah from Texas on New Year's Eve. I took the girls skiing at Solitude that day, but we spent the rest of our time with family.

I took a day off work for the funeral. It was in Layton where Eric's grandma lived with Aunt Julie. Eric spoke at the funeral (as did the oldest grandchild from each family). He gave a wonderful tribute to grandma. She was buried in Bountiful.

Bruce and Joanie had all of us over afterward for pizza and games. Eric's mom had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's in the last year and was doing pretty well while she was here and watching some of Joanie's videos of old times. There were some moments when she seemed perfectly fine and understood what was happening, but others when her eyes seemed glazed over and it didn't seem she knew who we all were.

Since she's returned home, however, Janis has been struggling and it has been really hard on Eric and his family. We're all trying to figure out the best way to love and help her.

Some photos from the visit.

Mindy, Janis and Eric

L to R: Jeana, Bianca, Rachel, Portia, Emily, Laney, Taylor, McKay, Joan and Janis

Portia and her cousin Laney

Progress

Since she started with the GMS orchestra, Bianca spends more time at orchestra and music lessons on Saturday than she does in a normal day of school. We're up earlier (and after a week of work, I could use a day to sleep in) than a regular school/work day. But Bianca loves it. She loves being in a place where the other kids are as intense (most probably even more) than she is about music. She doesn't complain, but I know her arms (and head) are tired by the end of her Saturdays. Her orchestra had their fall concert at the end of November and although I knew they were an awesome orchestra, watching her with them makes me so proud that she's a part of this.



I've adopted a theory about music that goes like this: Heavenly Father has allowed us to nurture our talents and our "tithing" back is to play and bring the spirit to sacrament meetings. Bianca learned and played Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring on viola in sacrament meeting in December. I don't understand how she can practice pretty well at home, then stand up there in front of all those people and play without missing a note. Her tone is beautiful and she's really progressing so much every week. She's upped her practicing to two sessions of about an hour each day. This isn't something I make her do, but she wants to do it.

Portia was asked to play her cello for the primary program in October and played "My Heavenly Father Loves Me." She still takes lessons with Richard Hoyt and just completed Suzuki Book Two. Richard told her that after she completes book three, then she'll be a real cellist. She's looking forward to that day. We break up her practices into two sessions (this is because she frankly doesn't have the attention span she needs for the amount of practice she needs to do). I do new Suzuki pieces with her before school/work, and Eric has taken over scales, arpeggios, note-reading, and Suzuki review after school. She's recently started vibrato. I was surprised that she can pretty much play any song you ask her to (I had assumed this was a talent only Bianca had). Maybe it's more of a string-instrument thing. Not sure.

We have had a little difficulty with Portia's note-reading recently. I had reservations with this whole Suzuki method from the beginning for this very reason, but hopefully it will still come. I got frustrated the other morning when Portia wasn't "reading" the music (Suzuki Book 3 conveniently has left out all the fingerings—thank goodness!—so now she can't rely on that) so I told Portia I expected an essay from her when I returned from work on why she needs to learn to read notes. It was sort of cute though; she had titled it S.A. Hahaha! Hopefully she'll now realize the why to the note-reading. She is so cute it's kind of hard to discipline her.

Funny story for anyone who appreciates and knows music: One night at dinner, Eric was telling me that Portia was FINALLY getting the triplets in the I Can Read Music rhythms. After dinner, Portia came up, pointed at the section of my closet where I keep things (and I had a group of 3 Littlest Pet Shop cats—which Portia had called the triplets—stashed up there when it bought them on sale and was going to give it to her for Christmas). She stated, "Dad said I could have the triplets!" It took a couple back-and-forths and a couple conferences to figure out that Portia had misunderstood when Eric had said she "was finally getting the triplets" in her music. Here's Portia with the Pet Shop triplets she actually got for Christmas:

Best investment we ever made . . .

I haven't regretted paying the little extra money it cost to install heat under the tile in our bathroom when we were remodeling. And as you can see, on a cold winter's morning, it's hard to resist!

Christmas Season 2013

Christmas season came and went so fast this year. I'm not looking forward to taking down the decorations (they seemed to take forever to put up this year). But mark my words: I will not buy any Christmas stuff in after-Christmas sales this year. Wait, unless I can find ready-made red bows. I kind of need those for the garland on the railings. But nothing else! I had been looking forward to putting up our tree all year as we bought our 12-foot, flocked tree half-off in the after-Christmas sale at Taipan Trading last year. I finally have the perfect place to put up a tall tree (in our library) and am still loving it. If I wouldn't turn into the crazy Christmas lady, I'd keep this tree up all year long. I love the snowy owls, crystal chandelier ornaments and the turquoise-silver-and-red color scheme. 

We watched loads of Christmas movies this year—all the oldies but goodies—since I'm always so tired after work and love snuggling up with the girls in my bed and watching TV. We got free tickets to go downtown to see A Snow White Christmas that the girls really liked. 

We stayed in town for Christmas as usual. A couple of years ago, Eric and I decided it's just too hard to try to travel to either St. Louis or Dallas to see our families. So now Christmas belongs to us: We get to set our own traditions and we get to do it how we want to. We had a low-key, awesome Christmas Eve where we ate Eric's traditional Irish shepherd's pie and reenacted the Nativity from the Bible. Both Bianca and Portia prepared songs on their instruments: Bianca played O Little Town of Bethlehem on viola and Portia played Silent Night on her cello. We each read Christmas poems by Leslie Norris. And did our annual reading of Three Trees. Then Bianca and Portia watched a Christmas movie and slept downstairs by the tree. Eric and I finished the wrapping. Thankfully, this year we actually finished before 10 o'clock.

The next morning, Bianca and Portia were ready for presents at 6:30. I started the wood fire down in the basement and we opened presents.

The big presents this year were Bianca's ipod touch and Portia's balance beam. They got a shared present too, a go-kart that really won't be all that much fun until the spring. Eric made these awesome frames with prints we picked up when we were in Italy; Bianca embroidered a Y slogan for dad's carriage house; Portia drew pictures for each of us and framed them. I still stick to my 3 categories—Bianca got exercise (think Nike App for her ipod), eduction (Amazon gift card so she can read on her ipod), and a shopping trip with me to get her some clothes SHE can pick out) and Portia's exercise was her balance beam, talent was a bunch of art supplies and light-up dry-erase board, and play (Pet Shops again).  I think the girls got plenty to be grateful too, without being spoiled. I may regret the ipod touch thing though. We're setting up some rules about usage.

We spent Christmas day with the Quigley's—Bruce and Joanie and Jason and Wendy's family. It was delicious food, relaxing, and fun. I'm starting to have a love-hate relationship with the game Settlers of Catan. And I still maintain that I play boardgames for the enjoyment they provide—not just to win. It was another nice Christmas that I'm sad to see go.

Playing Settlers of Catan on Christmas Day

Crazy Halloween

October flew by this year! So Halloween decorations came out and went back into the box so quickly I'm still not sure where the time went. The girls got to do some fun Halloween stuff, though.

Aunt Joanie and Uncle Bruce had their annual Halloween party that included traditional games like bobbing for apples, donut-eating contest, wrap the mummy. We always have such a great time with the Quigleys.

Emily, Bianca, Portia and me

The Saturday before Halloween, Portia got to play spooky Halloween songs with other cellists around the state in the Suzuki Halloween play-in. They dressed in their costumes—Portia was a princess—and played Witch's Dance (Paganini) and Moon over the Ruined Castle out of the Suzuki book, and then learned the Ghost of John and Itsy Bitsy Spider. Then they just played other Suzuki songs. There was a lecture at the same time for the parents so I missed recording the spooky stuff. The only thing I got was Musette at the end. You can tell Portia's starting to lose interest as her bowings are suffering and she's getting distracted (wow she looks around a lot).

On Halloween, the girls got to wear their costumes to school. Portia decided to be Cherry Jam (a Strawberry Shortcake character). Her favorite part was the pink hairspray she got to wear. Since I was working, I couldn't go to the school Halloween parade so Eric did and sent me some pictures at work. Look how cute my little sweetie is with her friends Ashley and Halle.

Bianca decided this year that she wanted to be Annabeth from the Percy Jackson series of books she loves. The costume didn't involve much but a Camp Half Blood t-shirt, a necklace of beads she painted herself, owl earrings, and a baseball cap. Costumes seem to be getting less interesting as kids get older. I guess that is the way things work.

Every year, we would go to the trick-or-treat at Eric's work but thankfully my work did one. So my kids got to come see my office and see the big Panda and get candy from my co-workers. I dressed up in my sari since I never get to wear it and went as an Indian princess. I wasn't around to get pictures today so Bianca nearly slipped through the cracks. Thankfully there was one picture of the three of us at work.

We had our traditional pumpkin pizza for dinner. Bianca went to a Halloween party with some friends in the ward, and they all went trick-or-treating together. Portia wanted to go with our neighbor Reba so I went with Reba's mom all over. It felt nice to get out and walk around (a common problem I've been having with sitting so much at the office). It was a beautiful fall night. And the kids returned home with gobs of candy.

Life's Stages

For the last six months, there's been a mama deer with the sweetest two little polka-dot backed deer following her around—nibbling the grass, bushes, and the apples falling in our yard. They look up when we come outside, but are pretty tame. We love those deer and have pretty much claimed them as our very own pets.

A couple weeks ago, as I was driving Bianca to the bus stop on my way to work, our mama deer ran across the busy street in front of my car. I slammed on my brakes even though she had already made it across because I suspected there was a smaller deer right behind her. When I stopped, it frightened the deer and she ran the opposite direction of her mom and the other baby-who-had-grown-up-there-are-no-more-spots. The mama looked across the street with a panic in her eyes. But there was nothing I could do but make my way on to work.

Bianca by that time had started saying in her not-so-sweet tween voice, Why did you stop? And there I was understanding exactly the panic in that mama deer's eyes, being scared for the child she loves so much, wanting to love the child but being so far away and it seemed there was nothing she could do. It wasn't up to her. She just had to wait on the other side and hope.

After I dropped Bianca off, I was upset all the way to work. How did I get to the point where I don't feel like I can even talk to my child anymore without it ending up in some sort of argument? I can't even ask her about her day without her completely clamping up and rolling her eyes. I really don't get it. I know it's her age. But she was my only child for so long and we could always, always talk. I always wanted to be that mom who my kids could talk to and now it seems that I'm just like every other mom I never thought I would be. When I do get small glimpses of trust, they're small and I have to dig for those bits.

On Friday, one of the small deer was lying dead on the road right outside our house. It stabbed me in the heart so hard I cried all the way to work. I don't want to see a heartbroken mama deer staggering around our yard. I'm not ready to see only bits of that family surviving on brown, crumbling autumn leaves.  As moms, we just want to love our kids and keep them close. And I'm trying, but every time I ask my daughter a question, I feel like a deer in headlights. Will she let me peek into her world this time or shut me out again? Bianca turned twelve just weeks ago. I can't imagine it getting worse than this, but somehow know it will.