Random Things I’m Loving This Week

1.  I love these tiny purple flowers that grow in the wild in early, early spring.  Sometimes they pop up in bunches on people’s lawn, sometimes in the forest, and sometimes they seem to be purposefully planted under bushes and in flower beds.  I have no idea what they are but I love coming across them.

2.  Tonight the Arrowhead Chorale sang in a concert at Sacred Heart Music Center that brought together an amazing guest organist who played an amazing instrument, our choir, and a Native American Drumming choir, the leader of which often also sings in the Arrowhead Chorale with me.  The music was extremely well chosen and interesting, the audience was large, which was really fun, and I very much enjoyed myself.  (I didn’t enjoy my bronchitis cough which seems to be returning for the third time in the last six weeks).  I especially liked sitting up in the balcony, which is where the Arrowhead Chorale sang from, because we had a perfect, up close view of the organist.  Organists never, ever cease to amaze me.  His feet were flying, and the sounds were magnificent.

3.  A few weeks ago Dr. Peds got an ipad.  He loves it.  I was pretty skeptical about getting it, but I knew he would use it a lot, so I agreed.  It turns out I really like having the little guy in the kitchen to check things quick and look up things while I’m cleaning up or doing stuff with the kids.  The ipad works well for us to share, much better than a laptop would have worked, because that would have just become his computer.  We are a multi- computer family.  We sort of agreed on that before we got married.  We don’t share computers well.  At least we knew not to try it!  Ha!  Anyway, one of my favorite things about the ipad is the Pandora application, which is kind of an internet radio thing.  You type in a song/artist or in my case obscure composer and it plays some music related by that person and then plays some other things that are sort of like it.  I love obscure classical composers, and I’ve gotten to hear several new ones while the kidlets and I listen to Pandora at lunch.  Best of all, it brings up a biography about the composer or artist as the song is playing, which is really helpful and interesting to read. The biographies are informative, and I would never normally take the time to look up that stuff.

4.  I am loving the early morning sunrise each morning.  It is so wonderful to get up to natural light.  Everyone in the house is up earlier and more happy in the mornings.

5.  My students are busy working on music for a couple of different performances coming up, and they are doing so very well.  I just love how hard they have been working.  It has been so fun to see so much improvement over the last few months, and to look back on how much they’ve changed in the last few years of lessons.  Next year will be a really neat year for me.  Because we’ve moved so much, I’ve never been able to have piano students for periods longer than 3 years, and next year will be the start of the fourth year with some of my students.  Yay!

6.  The windows have been open in our house for the last few weeks!  Fresh air . . . it’s terrific.