Tag: Band

A Week of Wins…and some Weirdos

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Congratulations on making it through the first full week of February, y’all! We had a lot of snow around here—nothing that really stuck until today—and some late starts to the school days, which were appreciated because no one really wants to leave the house when it’s cold out anyways, right? No all-out snow days, though. Sigh.

Top priorities this past week:

  • Vet appointment for Quesnel
  • Rachel’s birthday
  • Valentine’s Day
  • Getting the quilting going on the King David’s Crown quilt

Caring

I was able to get Quesnel in for a vet appointment on Wednesday and it turns out that she had a kidney infection. It also turns out that vet bills are ridiculously expensive. But we now have a kitty that is acting more like her usual self after three days of antibiotics. Poor thing, she was so miserable.

Celebrating

I really didn’t do much work on Rachel’s birthday or Valentine’s Day. I think they’re as taken care of as they can be until a day or two beforehand. Gotta love all the last-minute work that can’t be done ahead of time, eh?

Creating

The King David’s Crown is not only basted, but the quilt also has its basic foundational quilting complete, BUT my quilting stencils are STILL NOT HERE YET. They sat at their post office of origin all week and finally moved yesterday across the country to Montana. I imagine the earliest they’ll get to me is Monday afternoon, but with how slow this is all going I’d gamble on them not arriving until Tuesday.

It turns out that I can baste a twin-sized quilt in thirty-five minutes. That was not the case the last time I attempted that sort of thing. Thank you, Yoga. [insert weird Gen Z hand-heart motion here]

I finished the Stripey Christmas socks! They are in the process of having their ends woven in and then they’ll go have a tub-tub and I’ll be able to show them to you!

I started BOTH the Midnight Lark socks and the Cherry Twilight socks this week. The Midnight Lark socks are my “waiting for kids” van knitting project, so they’ll come along at a slower rate than the Cherry Twilight socks because those are in the house and will be worked on whenever I have downtime at home.

Highlights of the Week

  • Nathaniel did Solo Competition today on the xylophone and received a Superior rating! That’s pretty awesome for a freshman!
  • Rachel had a big choir concert this week and it went really well.
  • I basted a quilt in thirty-five minutes! It was basically an intense thirty-five minutes yoga practice, and I was worn out afterwards, but still, I DID THAT.
  • Had lunch with a friend and it raised my spirits immensely. Friends are good.

Lowlights

  • I cannot escape weirdos sitting behind me at choir concerts, apparently. The couple sitting in front of us smelled of weed so badly it gave me a splitting headache, and the family sitting behind us was very adjacent to drunk, smelled like it, and didn’t shut up the entire concert, even breaking into song when the choirs sang familiar tunes. Whoever was sitting directly behind me also tapped their toe on my chair about a sixteenth of a beat off from the music, not only driving me crazy but also jarring my back the entire time. I could not get out of that venue fast enough once the concert was finished. I need to come up with some sort of mindfulness practice or something to help me get through these nightmares of concerts because this kind of occurrence is now the norm and it’s destroying my enjoyment of the concerts, which is not how I want that part of this chapter of life to go.
  • Poor Quesnel being sick. But she’s lots better now.

All in all, it was a lovely week—it’s always nice to put the final stitches into a knitting project, I was thankful to be granted more snuggles on the couch with Quesnel, and there are few things more perfect than drinking white chocolate peppermint herbal tea with your kids while you all watch the snow fall outside the kitchen windows. It was a week full of simple joys—Nathaniel’s Superior rating was a welcome development, and a simple lunch with a friend went way too long due to meaningful conversation. I hope the slow mornings keep coming, that the snowflakes keep falling, and the smiles keep happening.

Oh, and for those quilting stencils to get here faster…

Enjoying the End of Year Festivities

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This week was full of fun activities—the end of year film festival for Rachel, Nathaniel’s final middle school band concert, and the senior honors night for Renaissance.  It’s so much fun to see the culmination of everyone’s hard work at the end of the year, and, in Ren’s case, at the end of her K-12 school career.

Top priorities this week:

  • Graduation & recital clothing
  • Graduation quilt progress
  • Party decorations & ordering progress
  • Planting last of plants in garden
  • June’s hymns

Celebrate

Graduation party preparations are going well.  My credit card fraud department gave me a call this week to make sure my card hadn’t been stolen because I’m ordering large quantities of things from businesses that I don’t normally do business with, so that was a funny little moment.  We will have shelter from the weather and ways to keep the food warm.  Excellent party prepping.

I made a lot of progress on the signature quilt as well; all pieces have their top and bottom borders.  I’ve had a number of requests to mail blocks to people who will be unable to attend the party, and I need to get those out in the mail.  I ordered more of the white fabric because I think I’m going to have to either make a bigger quilt or incorporate some signatures blocks into the backing, which is an awesome “problem” to have.  It’s so nice that people want to share their good memories and well wishes with Renaissance.  She’s such a kind soul.

We went to a graduation party for Renaissance’s friend Riley on Saturday. We’re really there! Graduation things are happening! It was such a nice event; there were all sorts of band families there and lots of great people who are involved with the school in some fashion. Riley’s mother, Chrissy, has been involved with everything forever and wow, does that ever create a fantastic village for your kid when you do that. Good food, good friends, and the best picture wall I’ve ever seen done. It was lovely.

Gardening

I haven’t planted my remaining plants in the garden yet because budgetary constraints dictated that I wait until next week to purchase the planting containers and extra potting soil.  It’ll be fine.  Nathaniel is so pleased that we’re going to have raspberries and Rachel is really looking forward to her strawberries.  It makes me so happy to stoke their interests in gardening; it’s such a great hobby and skill to develop for their adult years.

It’s rained a lot this week, so the plants are well-watered and I haven’t been out to check on anything too much.  From my kitchen window it doesn’t look like the slugs have been getting to anything, so I’m optimistic that we got the majority of them killed whilst weeding over Memorial Day weekend.  Fingers crossed!

Community

I haven’t touched anything church music this week, which is OK because I always post a month’s hymns through the next month’s Fast Sunday, so we’re fine.  I’ll get June’s hymns finalized and posted during church on Sunday.

Highlights

Nathaniel’s concert was so great.  I am just so impressed with our music programs in our school district.  Proud to be a part of it all.  Nathaniel had a big part in one of the songs they played where it looked like his arms weren’t even connected to his body because he was drumming so fast.  So proud of him.

Renaissance participated in the elementary school walk through this week where the seniors go to their old elementary schools in their caps and gowns and parade about and talk to their old teachers, which I think is the cutest idea ever.  Since she didn’t attend elementary school here she decided to go to the elementary school where she volunteered and read to children last year, so some of the teachers knew her anyway.  It was even topped off with the PE parachute being brought out for the seniors to play with one last time.  Because honestly, gym parachute was peak elementary school enjoyment.  What a fun week for her.

At the Honors Award Ceremony Renaissance was awarded cords for a high GPA and having 50+ hours of community service, and she received her stole for National Honor Society.  A wonderful surprise that evening was the announcement that she’d been awarded two $1,000 scholarships from our community’s scholarship foundation!  Those scholarships will cover her expenses for her first quarter of pastry school!  We are so grateful for our community’s contribution to her post-high school education, and proud of her for doing all the work to earn those awards.

Renaissance will be playing her flute during Baccalaureate next week, and so she was flipping through our church’s hymn book and all the flute books for church and asking me if specific hymns were LDS-oriented only or if they were well-known in other denominations, and it was nice way to spend an hour together.  I was pressing quilt blocks and making my guesses and she was confirming with some internet research, and we learned a lot about different songs, some that I would have guessed were only known to the LDS church and then we’d find out that it’s been around since the 1600s and we’d laugh at our silliness.  I’ve missed doing church music stuff with my kids—I’m proud of their work in the school bands and choirs, but church music was where they started and I’ve always enjoyed doing that with them.  We figured out which hymns would be recognizable to people of other Christian faiths as well and she created her program from those choices.

Lowlights

I have a smattering of ant bites on my left wrist and hand from a Memorial Day gardening mishap and they have swelled up angry and red and they’ve itched and ached all week long.  I look like I have some sort of communicable disease. 

Rachel asked that her final film project NOT be shown at the film festival. She was heartbroken over how all it shook out. She loves making films, but this was a group project gone sour. Thankfully, her teacher respected her wishes and didn’t show the film.

The five-year-old dishwasher developed a hole in one of its hoses and leaked all over the kitchen and ruined the wood floor we had installed just a few years ago from when the fridge developed a leak and ruined the wood floors.  This is bad for three reasons:  1) The floor is warped and absolutely ruined, 2) We’re hesitant to make another claim on our homeowner’s insurance and risk our rates going through the roof, and 3) Our family must handwash the dishes until the replacement dishwasher shows up next week, and a family of six creates a lot of dirty dishes.  It’s been a moderate source of stress.  One of my work arounds has been to have whoever is on dish duty to start working while I prepare dinner.  I like the results so much that I may keep this arrangement going in the future.  *silver linings*

Another week done and dusted! Oh, next week will see me on the verge of tears pretty much every day…I’m so proud of my girl, but so sad that her little childhood is ending. I have absolutely loved being a mama to these sweet people. I’m excited to see where adulthood will take them, but do I ever miss pigtails and brown paper bag puppets. There will be new cool things! I just don’t know what they are yet, and that’s ok.

The Month of May Churns Away

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I cannot believe that it is still the month of May.  So much has been going this month that is seems like it’s been two months in one.  What a busy, fun time of year!

Top priorities this past week:

  • Get grad party invitations out
  • Get Christmas tree down
  • Garden
  • Cleaning
  • Laundry

Celebrate

Graduation party invitations are almost all mailed or delivered, yay!

The Christmas trees are officially dismantled and stored away until November.  For future reference, Future Cara, it only took an hour to take down the giant Christmas tree, so stop dragging your feet about it in the future.  And also, Future Cara, you are freakishly busy from January through May for the next four years, so take down the Christmas stuff before the New Year.  Just do yourself that favor.  Please.

Garden

It’s radish season!  I need to spend some quality time with my mandoline slicer in the next weeks.  We’ve not eaten a lot of radishes as a family, but boy howdy are my kids going to get some exposure in coming days!  I purposely planted a purple variety in the hopes that it will make Rachel happier about eating them.

One of my big plans for the Memorial Day weekend is to get the garden and yard cleaned up and we spent a big chunk of yesterday doing that.  There’s still so much work to do, but we got a lot of the worst of it done so I’m hoping that tomorrow’s work will see it through to the end of everything. 

There are so many signs of potential in the garden right now from the little bits of work that we’ve been doing up until now.  It’s so exciting to watch spring burst onto the scene.  I really, really love seasons and how everything changes and has signs about new parts of life on the horizon.  There’s so much excitement in nature!

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Cleaning

Prom preparation messes have been cleaned up.  I also ordered a storage box for fancy hair accessories so we can store them out of the way during most of the year and be able to find them easily when the next dance rolls around.  Ren and Rachel have amassed a beautiful collection of formal hair accessories over the years, and it’d be a shame to lose them.

Prom dress construction has almost been cleaned up.  I just need to clean up the leftover fabrics and I’m dreading opening the tote bins of apparel fabric and potentially finding out there’s no room for the prom dress scraps.  I’m making myself write that down because it’s such a silly reason to be avoiding a task, and hopefully, by writing it out and acknowledging how ridiculous it is, I’ll be extra motivated to just bite the bullet and get this rather simple task done.

My back was hurting a lot this week from overdoing it in my Tuesday workout, so I didn’t get a lot more cleaning done.  I traded off for getting a lot of office work and grad party planning done.

Clothing

I made a little bit of a dent in the looming folding pile.  It’s nice to reclaim the space that’s been storing the laundry bins of clean clothes .

Highlights

Nathaniel had his last Cross Country meet this week.  All season long he has consistently run his 2 miles in 15:55-16:05 minutes.  All season long.  After his last race he quickly logged on to the website that reports their times and a look of disbelief and then joyful surprise crossed his face:  Somehow, even after having to take a week off of practices due to being sick all last week, he shaved off an entire minute and finished his race with a time of 14:55!  He was a very happy boy for the rest of the evening.

Renaissance had her final band concert and it was such a great evening.  She had a solo in jazz band, the entire concert was fun and upbeat and sincerely impressive with the music each group was playing, and then we had a reception afterwards with cake and treats and a tear-inducing slideshow of the seniors throughout their band years.  I really, really love being a band mom and I’ve really enjoyed all these years of helping her make music with her friends.  It is incredibly sad that this part of her life is over.  I think the only thing that keeps me from being downright depressed about is seeing how excited she is to begin the next phase of her life and her pastry chef training.

Emily and I went out for lunch on Thursday and had a great conversation about her future plans.  I don’t want to get my hopes up too much too early, but it feels like she’s starting to get to the end of working through some of the hang-ups that have been plaguing her for the past couple of years and is getting ready to surge forward into adulthood.  Sometimes you just need a little extra time to sort stuff out, right?  It’s scary to allow that time to take place, but we might be getting to the end of the tunnel.  At any rate, she seems to be less anxious about things, which is such a relief.  The high schoolers that were in the thick of it during COVID have really struggled with a lot of stuff ever since.  Perhaps normalcy is starting to catch back up with them finally?

On Wednesday, when my back was twinging the worst, I gave myself permission to go down a research rabbit hole, partly because I was in too much pain to think logically and partly in the hopes that doing crafty research would help me relax and send the message to my muscles that they could also relax.  I spent multiple hours tracking down as much information as I could about bead embroidery and beaded embellishments because I want to continue making formal dresses, but I’m finding that even if you make a gorgeous dress it often needs a little dose of embellishment to truly make it sing, and I think the skill of bead embroidery would be absolutely fantastic to fill that void.  I’m thinking about dedicating time over the next year to learning the skill so I can apply it to next year’s prom dresses.

Lowlights

  • Wednesday’s back pain.  Totally did it to myself because I was enjoying my workout on Tuesday and decided to go for far too long in it.  Consistency and moderation win the race, not frenzied extremes.  This is a battle I fight in my soul on a daily  basis.
  • I hit a flock of baby birds with my van as I was driving to work on Friday.  Not my best Disney Princess moment.

It was a really good week, despite the few setbacks. This really is a lovely time of year and I’m excited for what’s coming our way in the upcoming weeks! End of school year is exciting, exhausting, and fun.

Rhododendron Parade and Graduation Party Preparations

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Top priorities this past week:

  • Summer School Registration
  • Garden
  • Laundry
  • Cleaning
  • Graduation party planning

Caring

Oh my goodness, summer school registration is cutthroat in our district.  I arrived thirty minutes before the doors opened to the counseling center and the line was almost going out of the front door of the school.  I was successful in securing Nathaniel a spot in the classes he’ll take over the summer to open up the rest of his schedule to accommodate four years of band in high school.  Whew!

This week has felt like it’s been all about Nathaniel!  He came down with something Monday night and has spent the entire week just hanging out with a 103-104˚F fever.  I ended up taking him to the pediatrician on Wednesday because he was looking really awful, even for being sick, and they tested him for a ton of stuff.  All the rapid tests came back negative, so we’re waiting on cultures.  This has been a rough illness.  I made Michael stay home from work on Friday so someone could be with the boy while I was at work because I was worried about him. Thankfully, his fever broke on Friday and he was feeling a lot better, so he could join the marching band in their last parade of the year on Saturday.

Gardening

I put in a huge day in the garden on Monday and cleared the weeds out of two big areas of the garden.  This made my back extremely unhappy for a few days, but it was worth it.  I also planted a few of my started seeds—zucchini, summer squash, slicing cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, cilantro and a lot of marigolds—and direct sowed some bush green beans, more cabbage than we’ll ever need, zinnias, cosmos and some more sunflowers that the slugs already ate.  Clearing out weeds helped me find a number of slugs so I could send them to their eternal torment of an afterlife.

It’s so fun to see things coming up and blooming!  The peas are doing well, the nasturtiums are definitely coming along, and the radishes and lettuces are starting to gain some steam.  The carrots are slow starting and slugs keep getting my sunflower sprouts, so I’m keeping an eye on those crops.

Clothing

Some laundry has been done, but not the amount needed to truly make a difference.  I did wash Rachel’s choir dress, so it’s ready for whenever she needs it. 

Cleaning

I did a good job on getting the kitchen reset and the girls have been doing a pretty good job at maintaining it.

All my birthday stuff is cleaned up.

Celebrating

I took it a little easier on a few days this week just to make sure I fully recovered from the stress of the prom dress crunches.

I’ve addressed and mailed about half of Renaissance’s graduation party invitations.  I really hope people remember to RSVP.  It’s so nerve-wracking to depend on RSVPs.  I once received zero RSVPs for one of my kids’ birthday parties, so I made plans to do something else so my child didn’t have to wait around at home for no one to show up.  I left a note on our door that said we’d received zero RSVPs and so we had made other plans, and came home to wrapped gifts left on our doorstep.  I know I was in the right with my actions, but I still feel terrible about it.  It’s not hard to RSVP, DO IT.  I even made it super simple and put a QR code on the invite.  I am still terrified that I’ll get three RSVPs and then eighty people will show up.  I think this will be a situation where I will definitely have to phone around two weeks before the party and nail down the RSVPs myself because food-wise I could be in a lot of trouble if I don’t have a definite head count.  People just always make you feel so pushy and high-strung when you do that, but what else should they expect?  Ugh, this is one of my soapbox topics.  Just RSVP, people.  The same day you get the invitation.  We all have our calendars on our phones, so we already know whether we’re available or not.  Yes or no, I don’t care; I just need to know how many people I need to feed.  RSVPs save the sanity of the hostess.  Be kind to the hostess.

I’ve almost got the menu planned out; I just need to check in Ren to see how involved she wants to be with food prep so I can decide on the desserts.  When you have an aspiring pastry chef in your family, their involvement greatly influences what you offer for desserts at a gathering.

Decoration plans are good and supplies should be arriving soon.  I need to come up with some activities as well, mostly to keep people’s younger children occupied.  Space might be at a premium, though, so judicious planning is needed.

Community

I don’t like to publish where my kids are going to be ahead of time because that seems unsafe, so another thing we had on our plates this past week was the Rhododendron Parade. It’s quite the drive from where we are and we invite our middle school’s eighth graders to also participate so they can see what all the fun is about in the hopes that they’ll continue with band in high school, which meant, for the only time ever, Nathaniel marched in a parade in the same band as Renaissance.

In years past the eighth graders have also gotten to wear a high school marching band uniform, but the decision was made in the days leading up to parade that we were going to stop doing that this year, so my hopes of a picture of Nathaniel and Renaissance in matching uniforms together was dashed. Sigh. Our little school district is growing rapidly and it costs $22 to dry clean each used uniform at the end of the year, which hasn’t been that big of an expense in years past, but we had forty eighth graders this year, which would have added $880 to the bill and that’s a pretty big expense for such a small amount of wear.

Luckily, though, we decided to open up the “Band Gear” store to the eighth graders ahead of their freshman year so they can have band swag before the football games start in the autumn, and we were able to deliver their new band gear to them at the rehearsal prior to the parade, so many of them were wearing those items, my son included. Adorable.

I really enjoy being involved with our band program and am so thankful that the booster president approached me at tip-off two years ago to see if I’d be interested in helping out. It’s been a great way for our family to spend time together and serve together. It’s sad to see Renaissance’s band days come to an end, but we still have four more years of Nathaniel in band! And I’ll be dragging our family along for the ride the entire time because I was elected to be the band booster president this next school year. Get ready for even more band booster craziness, y’all!

We have a big end-of-the-school-year BBQ at a nearby park after the parade, and I was able to get some really photos of the kids and even one of Michael while we were there:

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It was a good and busy week, thankfully, and I hope to keep pushing forward and getting everything put back together in the house.  There’s so many good things coming up in the weeks ahead! What an exciting phase of life! See you next week!

Well, That Was Unfortunate Timing

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Nathaniel was sick for the entirety of Spring Break, and on Saturday I woke up feeling…off. Michael took Ren to the school for Daffodil Parades so I could get my energy up and meet them at one of the later parades, but within a few hours it was very clear that I had caught Nathaniel’s bug and was out of the running for anything beyond laying on the couch and watching television through bleary eyes. And so it went for the remainder of last week. And this last weekend. And today. I am having a heck of a time with this illness.

I’m hoping the exhaustion and relentless coughing starts to fade this week because I was supposed to finish Ren’s prom dress last week and this was the week to start working on Rachel’s dress. Stress levels are high.

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

  • Saturday: Chicken Shawarma
  • Sunday: Cheesy Ham and Potatoes for Nathaniel’s birthday
  • Monday: Dino Nuggets, French Fries, Mixed Vegetables
  • Tuesday: Crockpot Chili & Baked Potatoes
  • Wednesday: Cheeseburgers, Spiced Braised Rhubarb
  • Thursday: Crockpot Honey Chicken
  • Friday: Salad Bar

Clothing

Catching up after missing all of last week’s laundry.

Cleaning

Catch up, basic upkeep.

Caring

  • Renaissance passed her driver’s license test last week! There’s still a lot of paperwork to get her driving legally on her own, and it is a high priority this week. I am really looking forward to this development.
  • Rachel is taking her driver’s license knowledge test later this week, so helping her study for that.
  • Emily, possibly spurred on by the success of her younger sisters in the driver’s license department, has finally renewed her driving permit and is now legal to start practicing for her own driver’s license, so I imagine I need to start making time for her practicing, too.
  • Need to figure out a way to get the bridal shower and wedding gifts to the young woman who got married last week. I was too sick to go and she and her husband have headed back to school already.
  • We need to sit down with Renaissance and figure out her post-high school plans. She’s received news of the various scholarships she’s been awarded, the FAFSA is taking forever to process, and we just need to sit down and crunch numbers. Her high school is having their Decision Day soon where they celebrate kids’ post-high school plans, so it’d be good if she knew what she was doing by that date.

Creativity

  • Prom Dresses: I haven’t touched either of them since I got sick. So much work needs to be done this week. The extra yard of silk for Ren’s sleeves arrived safely last week, so we’re good to go there. I have two weeks’ less time to get Ren’s dress done because last night she got a text to look outside:

How cute is that?!?! Why weren’t Promposals a thing when we were young? He had good timing; we were just getting ready to have Nathaniel’s birthday cake, so he walked away from the incident with a prom date and birthday cake. On a frenzied prom dress-sewing note, though…the high school prom is two weeks before the church Spring Formal, so…I really need to sew faster.

  • Van Crafting Sessions™: I think I have a full schedule of music lessons this week and I have no idea what I’m going to do while I’m at them.

Gardening

  • The rhubarb is growing fast! Gotta start using it.
  • I didn’t do any planting last week, so I need to do both last week’s and this week’s planting and seed starting. We’re getting into the thick of planting season!

Celebrating

  • Nathaniel had his 14th birthday yesterday! I can’t believe my youngest child is starting high school next year. Where have the years gone?!?! Renaissance made him a Sherman Tank cake this year, in homage to his interest in World War 2.
  • Upcoming celebrations include:
    • Mother’s Day, which I don’t have to do anything for
    • My birthday, which I generally don’t have to do anything for
    • Memorial Day, which just means grilling some hot dogs and doing yardwork
    • Ren’s graduation, which is going to take a ton of work
    • Father’s Day, which I will also have to do work for.

I’m going to wait a bit before I get going on anything so I can focus on prom dresses.

Community

  • Band Parent meeting this week, with all the requisite paperwork and follow-up that goes with it.
  • There’s a Ward Potluck on the calendar from the email that the bishop sent out at the beginning of the year, but I’ve not heard anything else about it since, so I’m thinking it never materialized.
  • There’s a Relief Society activity this week about simplifying our lives, but it’s happening at the same time as a music lesson, so I probably won’t go.
  • Band performance for the seniors.

Alright, a big week with a lot of catch-up and I’m not feeling that great to begin with. Wish me luck! And look at this great photo of Renaissance in the Daffodil Parade, taken by a friend of a friend:

Cake, Silks & Pi(es)

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I feel like it was a really productive week, which is always nice. My little routine of writing these goals vs. outcomes weekly posts is helping me stay on-track with what I want to accomplish each week. I’m really glad I’ve reinstituted these. Not only are they keeping me focused, but I really enjoy writing them and re-reading them, like a journal. I rarely re-read my handwritten journals, so I don’t learn as much from my writing in those. Blog posts can actually be searched by keyword, for cryin’ out loud. Wonderful.

Top priorities this last week:

  1. Michael’s birthday
  2. Garden
  3. WREF Scholarship application
  4. Prom dresses
  5. Resurrecting music practice time

Celebrating

  • Michael’s birthday went well, there was an adorable “Among Us wedding cake” made by Renaissance, and each of the kids remembered to get him a gift this year. We did not have steak and potatoes for dinner, as I predicted; he requested fajitas.
  • The potentially brewing project died a sure death this past week. I’m bummed because it would have been a cool thing to do, but I’m also relieved because it was going to take a lot of time and effort to pull off. Many lessons were learned from this experience that I can apply in the future when such a situation inevitably pops up again.

Gardening

  • Trellises are in my house, as are some other gardening items.
  • All seeds needed through the month of April have been secured.
  • Rhubarb is still small.
  • I did sow the cabbages, some alyssum, but nothing else.
  • My sweet peas are just barely starting to sprout! You really have to look for them, but tiny little tendrils are pushing out of the soil!

Community

  • Renaissance did indeed submit her application for the WREF scholarship! Oh gosh, the arrhythmias…she submitted it yesterday at 2:15pm or so, and the pop-up that came up to confirm submission stated that it was due by 4pm that day. We had planned to work on it that evening, but something came up and we moved the time to earlier, THANK GOODNESS.
  • Band Parent meeting went well and many things have been scheduled for this last push of the school year. I still have a few office-y things to do for that.

Creativity

  • At Home:
    • Fat Quarter Shop upcoming quilt: Sneak peek video was posted on Friday on Instagram and I’m aware that my videography skills/software need an upgrade. I had planned to finish piecing the top on Saturday and even cleared my whole schedule for it, but some of my children decided to mutiny against their Saturday chores and much time was lost on this quilt because it went towards dialoguing and disciplining. I’m still confused as to why that day went so sideways. As it stands, I’m about 2/3 of the way done with assembling the blocks.
    • Prom Dresses: The fabric for Ren’s dress has arrived and I am so in love with it. It’s GORGEOUS. The contrast fabric isn’t as flowy as I would have liked, but we’ll just have to make do because it was the only kind of silk they had that came in the color we wanted. FYI, Shantung silk is not flowy. Tell your friends.
  • Van Crafting Sessions™: Designing wedding shawls: Newsflash: I’ve not done this before and I’m not good at it. Yet. (#growthmindset) Time was spent wrapping my head around how to actually do this.
  • Resurrecting music practice sessions: Did not happen because I’ve had them scheduled for the evenings, but now that it’s light outside again we’re actually outside during that time as a family. I’ll need to figure out a different time of day for this.

It was a really, really busy week with a concert on Thursday, which was also Pi Day, so Emily made three pies and because we had three pies chilling at our house I invited Ren’s band friends over after the concert and we all ate pie until 11:15pm. Ha ha. I’m generally an introvert who really appreciates a solid sleep schedule and bedtime, but sometimes you just gotta spend some time with friends. It was a good choice, despite how tired it made me the next day.