Saturday Mary had her first piano competition. Her age division was the five-eight year old range, and she was the youngest competitor in her category, so she got to go first. We practiced all morning and then drove to the Piano Gallery. The competition was in the basement, and Mary was so cute. The judge thought the door monitor needed to give him a signal to start, and the door monitor thought the judge was in charge of starting…so Mary just waited sweetly on stage facing the judge for about five minutes.
After their silent face-off, I remarked in the hall that the room was remarkably sound proof. That’s when we peeked in and realized what was happening. Mary was just standing there, smiling shyly at the judge. My heart just melted. And after the judge finally gave her the signal to play, she played her pieces as perfectly as she knew how. I was so proud of her.
I gave her the rest of the afternoon off, which was great for me because I needed to help Lydia practice for the next three hours. She learned all of “Little Playmates” in one sitting! I was so proud of her hard work, but by the end my heart was racing and I was breathing shallowly. Practicing with my kids feels very stressful to me. But Lydia was a superstar! She took a five minute break when I was done and then insisted on practicing for another thirty minutes on her own so she could fill out her 100 chart, which she also completed all in one sitting.
After that she drilled her sight words with my mom and practiced her reading, and before all of this she did her morning chores. By the time she was done with chores, practice, and reading, it was 4pm. At that point Abe went to the basement and played a fun pretend game with the kids. Lydia ran upstairs breathlessly to tell me how much fun it was, and then she ran back down. I joined them and took this video and these pictures:
In the afternoon I finished my book and made two pies for the pie social Abe was putting on as an Elder’s Quorum activity.
In the evening we went to the social and I chased the kids all around while Abe visited with ward members. Normally he chases the kids in social events, but since he was in charge of the activity, we switched roles.