We got a new outdoor table! I am so excited because it is BIG, and now we aren’t so squished when we eat outside. We eat outside every opportunity we have throughout the year. We could still squish around our round table, but anytime we had even just one extra guest, it was a problem. I have been coveting a Loll table for years. Loll is a local company that turns recycled milk jugs into heavy duty outdoor furniture. Like any large outdoor table, this one was pricy, but my friend happened to be invited to a special private Loll sale this fall, and just happened to call me on her cell phone when she was driving to ask me a question. Randomly, at the end of our conversation, she mentioned she was going to this sale and asked if there was anything I had been looking for. Yes! A table! And she found the exact size of table that I had been coveting for 70% off! I was so very excited!
I love the app Wonderlist. It’s a listing app, and I love making lists. Currently I probably have 30 lists going at once on this app, including everything from what books I want to read, to what I want to write about here on the blog, shopping lists, TO DO lists, lists for my kids. I love that I can see the lists from any computer in the house and my iPod. (It would work for a phone too, of course, but I don’t like phones). I have been using it for years and every day I love it more.
This fall Mr. Trouble on Feet happily joined in with his older siblings who have been going to AWANA for years. (YaYa has actually outgrown AWANA now and goes to youth group while they go to AWANA on Wednesday nights). I haven’t known anyone to love AWANA as much as Mr. TOF. He absolutely adores it down to his toes. He loves his vest. He loves his book. He loves going someplace with his brothers and sisters. He loves his AWANA teachers. Every day when he prays his is thankful for AWANA, and every day at nap he listens to his AWANA CD. The Banana taught him how to turn on the repeat button on the CD player, and there have been days when the Cubbie song has played for 90 minutes straight, my little guy singing along all the while.
Last week was a short week of school because of Minnesota Education Association Conference. Mr. SP had a boatload of homework to do on Monday and Tuesday. He literally did homework for 3-4 hours each night. It was insane, particularly because of any kidlet in the house, he is the one who hates homework the absolute most. I’m not sure how so many things ended up converging at once (projects, a 25 page math worksheet packet due the next day, and 3 or 4 tests on one day) because we really had been on top of everything, but it did all converge. There were tears, meltdowns and other miserable affairs, but my brilliant husband kept pouring him glasses of juice to get him through it. We never give the kidlets juice. I started dispensing chocolate chips when frustration began mounting, and my externally motivated boy got through it. He might have been up until 10:30 at night all week, but we got through it. That’s the power of sugar, friends.
Recently Mr. SP and I headed off to a special night at the symphony. First, I took him out to eat because my boy loves food. The symphony was playing “The Planets” by Holst along with “A Short Ride in a Fast Machine” and “Appalachian Spring.” To make the concert friendly for audience members who are not regular symphony goers, they projected pictures of space travel and planets up on the back wall of the sound shell. It was very well done, and a very different symphony experience that I knew Mr. SP would enjoy. Even better was the high school robotics team in the lobby with some of the robots they have built for competition the last few years. After intermission one of the robots came onstage to deliver the conductor’s baton, and it was perfect and adorable. Mr. SP loved it, and Mr. TOF, my robot lover back at home, couldn’t hear enough about it.
I loved this article about a piano teacher in hospice and how she spent her final days listening to students playing in her living room. It resonated so much with me and actually made me teary-eyed. We music teachers are a passionate bunch, and I know I’d feel exactly the same way about wanting to see and hear my students playing as long as I could. My students and their learning bring me such joy every day.
Speaking of music teachers, I am so much enjoying that several of my own children are now taking lessons from teachers who are just as messy as me! It makes me feel so much better about all of my piles of music and the fact that so, so many other things come before housework around here.
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