Dancing with Daffodils

I teach piano lessons to a few friends and neighbor kids and have recently started teaching my own kids. Lily has been taking for about a year now but her progress is slow because I am both her mom and her teacher. I don't have a set lesson time for her so we fit it in when we can, which means it can sometimes be three weeks before another lesson. I find it difficult to teach her and we've had some serious downs with very few ups lately when it comes to helping her practice and give her lessons. A few weeks ago we had a particularly bad argument that resulted in her crying and me ready to walk out the door. I told my husband I was done and that if she wanted to take piano we were going to have to find someone else to teach her. He was so calm and went on to tell me how important it is to him that our kids play the piano so he said he would take over as the practice parent, allowing me to just be her teacher.  I fell in love with him again during that conversation because he u...

Today I was able to attend a special meeting at church for all the women. In it we discussed our responsibilities regarding a program in our church called visiting teaching. I love this program and know it is inspired by God. It is called visiting teaching because we visit one another and teach the gospel to each other on a one-by-one basis, just as the Savior did. Each woman over 18 is assigned a companion and then two or three or four other ladies in our congregation to visit on a monthly basis. This is not always an easy responsibility. Some of these ladies we're asked to visit are not very welcoming, active in our church or open to gospel discussion. We're all mothers and wives and busy with life. Or we're shy or we're scared or we're hampered down by any number of other challenges. We discussed those difficulties today in an effort to figure out what is holding us back from doing a better job of fulfilling this assignment. I kept my mouth shut most of the t...

I have been remiss. I went on vacation and was having too much fun with my family to stop and write about them.  So I'm going to finish out the posts I had planned even though November is over. While on vacation I got to spend a good amount of time with my sister, KayLee. She and I are a lot alike and we have fun together. Other than one challenging year, KayLee and I have pretty much always gotten along. Especially since I've been an adult, she has been a good listener and very understanding. She has a way of making me feel like she really cares about me and what is happening in my life. A few years ago we were on a family trip and she and I were out floating on rafts in the ocean and talking. I had found out I was pregnant just that week and having miscarried previously, was planning to wait until after my first doctor appointment to announce. But being out there that day I found myself wanting to tell her and we ended up having a good discussion about baby names. No one el...

Today I'm grateful for my baby boy. He was such a welcome surprise. I went to the doctor to start on the medication that helps me get pregnant and I was on it for a week but it wasn't making me feel very good. I'd never had that problem before so I took a pregnancy test just to rule it out and turns out I was already pregnant. I really wanted a boy to balance out our family and so that Curtis would have a brother and I was so thrilled when we found out Brandon was coming. It took Josh and I months to agree on a name but we finally did just weeks before our sweet and huge baby boy joined our family. My pregnancy was challenging with him because I was on number four and that much more tired and worn out. My body started rebelling and the last few months I could hardly move at all. I was so uncomfortable and miserable and when he was a week overdue, I was going crazy. Thankfully I went into labor at about 1am and by the time we got to the hospital the contractions were so se...

I'm feeling grateful for a lot of people tonight, plus I'm running out of days in the month but not people so this is going to be a bit of a mix up but I hope you'll stay with me. 1. Erika our real estate agent. This may sound funny but I've been thinking a lot about her. Last year at this time we were figuring out financing, closing dates, packing up our old house and stressing about moving a mile up the road. It was wonderfully awful. Erika was amazing and I was so grateful to be able to count on her and she was so kind and steady and took care of everything she could so that I didn't have anything extra to stress over. She is an honest and good person and it was simply a pleasure to make her acquaintance as well as work with her. Although I must add that I hope our paths don't cross again for professional reasons ever again. 2. Amy is one of the first people we met when we moved here. She allowed my husband to stay in her house for ten days since he had t...

My first memory of Nikki is at her tenth birthday party and I remember that I felt really special having been invited to attend such a family event with Josh. Nikki was a sweet and quiet girl and it was fun to be around her. We took her miniature golfing, I took her to an amusement park and introduced her to new foods, we even had a sleepover once after Josh had left on his mission. With four older sisters, it was a nice change for me to be the older one for once and especially with Nikki because we have a lot in common. At the time we both danced at the same studio and we share a love of dance. We also both love to read and often talk about books. As she has grown into an adult it has been fun to watch her mature and become more of a peer than a little sister and I'm so grateful for her in my life. The week before I got married I was hosting three of my closest friends from out of state and we went on some fun adventures and we had Nikki come with us. I was so grateful that she w...

I'm grateful for Curtis for many reasons. First off, he just showed up into this world. After years of fertility treatments to get our first, I thought it would be a challenge every single time. So imagine my shock when I was feeling kind of funny and thought I would take a test just for kicks only to see it positive for the first time out of close to fifty tests. He was our miracle baby and even though it was a real challenge to have two little ones so close together, as they've grown older, it has been a wonderful blessing. Curtis loves to work with his dad and do outside projects and build stuff and fix things. One Saturday afternoon two years or three years ago I was watching kids for a friend and so our house was pretty full and busy. My husband was supposed to go help a different friend move and so I suggested he take Curtis just to alleviate some of the crazy. Turns out that he loves helping people move. As little as he was he held the door open and carried pillows and...