Author: Superpaige (Page 104 of 180)

Lately, I’ve been attending choir practice for our ward choir. It only took a few years and a few personal invites for me to decide that yes, I can actually make it to choir practice at 9am on Sunday mornings.

Why did it take you so long to go, Paige, don’t you love to sing?

Well, yes, I do love to sing, actually, and I’ve sung in many choirs throughout the years. And I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I’m a bit of a choir snob.

A choir snob? What’s that?

Well, I like to sing with people who know how to sing. I feel like if it’s worth the time of practicing, I want it to sound good when we perform it, not just like a bunch of people just got together and decided to sing a song. And since I’ve had some wonderful directors, I also really appreciate someone who can really direct a choir. I admit that I can’t do that. I can lead music, sure, but directing a choir takes another set of skills, and I really enjoy following a good director.

With that as the background, today at choir practice, we had quite an interesting dilemma. The regular choir director was out of town, and had asked one of our altos (who is also extremely talented and has experience directing as well) to fill in for her, since we are practicing for Easter, ward conference and Stake Conference coming up. She started us out on the song we’re singing next week (which at the moment I can’t remember the name of the song), and it has some complicated parts in the middle, where the soprano’s split into first and seconds, the altos split, and the tenors split into two parts, and the bass and baritone split, too. When you’ve only got four or five men, this is extremely difficult, as everyone ends up singing their own part. And behind me, there were two new basses who hadn’t been there before. The one bass, although he had a rough start of it and admitted that he doesn’t read music that well, eventually got the difficult parts, but the other one just wasn’t getting it. Even when the men were all supposed to be singing in unison, he wasn’t singing in unison with them. And the choir director was doing her best to go over the men’s parts, picking out the bass and baritone’s parts specifically, asking if they needed that part one more time, and generally doing her best to be positive. One of the tenors, who DOES read music, even came over and sang that part loudly enough for anyone to follow. Still not quite getting it.

Which really made me think. This is a ward choir, where everyone who wants to sing is invited to–even encouraged–to sing. There are no auditions, no tests to take to qualify for a spot in the ward choir. The only requirements are that you are willing to sing, and you come to at least some of the rehearsals. On the other hand, we as a choir want to sound good. We want to sound like we actually know what we are doing, and bring the spirit into the meeting. If people are distracted by someone who can’t follow, they might not enjoy the song, or feel the spirit. What is a director to do?

I asked my husband, and he said if he were the director, he would take this person aside, and thank them for wanting to be in the choir, but that they really shouldn’t be there since they were obviously struggling with the music. I thought, if it were me, I might ask them afterward if they needed some extra help, or if there were anything I could do to help them learn the music, or offer to let them take the music home to study in their free time. But I don’t think I would kick them out of the ward choir.

I don’t know what the director will do. I don’t know if this person will be there to practice next week, or if they will come up to sing with us in church next week. I’m glad it’s not my call.

What would you do?

7:30–Get Natalie out the door to catch the early bus and go to Orchestra
7:45–Cole leaves for Jr High
8:45–Send Jenna to the bus stop, and load John and Megan into the car to go to the Orthodontist’s
9:00–Check Megan in at the Orthodontist’s office, then take John over to Payless Shoes to buy his Lightening McQueen Crocs,

Then to Costco to get gas
9:25–back to the Ortho to make another apt in 6 weeks and pick up Megan
9:38–drop off Megan at school
9:45–meet my visiting teaching partner to go visiting teaching
10:30–go home and get John a snack, and help him change into his “itty bitty sports class” shirt
10:45–load John up into his carpool to go to the sports class
10:50–get my lesson ready for activity days, unload the dishwasher, and clean off the counter
12:00–John comes home from sports class, and needs some lunch. He also insists on wearing something green, or people will pinch him, so we find a green shirt and help him change it
12:30–walk John over to a neighbor’s house for a play group
12:38–drive to the grocery store, where I stock up on canned goods at the ‘case lot sale’, then go to the copy shop and spend $4 on copies for today’s Activity day lesson and handout
1:20–come home and unload groceries
1:40–sit down and watch part of Ocean’s 11 that I’ve had on the tivo since before Christmas and still haven’t finished watching
2:00–walk over (oh, no! It’s raining again) to pick up John from the neighbor’s play group
2:20–turn on Thomas the Train and let John watch it while I close my eyes for just a minute
3:00–Cole comes home from school. Mom does some laundry.
3:45–the girls come home from school, demanding a snack
3:48–get kids a snack, pick up neighbor and go to activity days
4:00–hold an activity for 7 roudy girls, where we blow out and color eggs, and teach them a lesson on the miracles of Easter, giving them each a folder full of the lesson to do with their own families for FHE
5:30–go home, reheat leftovers and eat a quick dinner
6:00-take Megan to the Jr High for her tour and registration
7:30–come home
7:35–encourage kids to
a)do homework
b)practice the piano
c)use the potty
d)do their jobs
8:30–encourage kids to
e)get in their pajamas
f)brush their teeth
g)stop fighting
h)say prayers
i)go to bed!
9:00–Everyone is finally in their beds, prayers and stories done, “I love you”s and “Goodnight”s said, wheat bags heated up, dishwasher started and counter cleaned off again.
9:10–I blog about it

Since I have reached the ripe old age of 40, and it’s the responsible thing to do, I went today and had a mammogram. I honestly didn’t think my girls could actually go that flat. Wow. But it wasn’t as horrible as I had imagined. Yes, it was uncomfortable, but only for a few seconds at a time. Thinking about it was worse than the actual appointment.

And to reward myself, I bought some Crocs on sale. Well, not Crocs actually. Croc Knock-offs. But they are wild and crazy and make me smile.

Welcome Spring!

My friend Kristy wrote about the joys of getting actual mail (in the mailbox, not the inbox). We don’t get many letters anymore, what with email, cell phones, and texting taking over all forms of communication. If I get anything handwritten at all, it’s likely to be an invitation, a thank you note, or a postcard, instead of a letter.

But I remember back to my days as a missionary for the LDS church. Living in Germany, with no one but a companion who is virtually a stranger, trying our best to follow all the rules and teach strangers about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sometimes the days were discouraging. Getting a letter from home was like a lifeline. A link to our past, and our home. And a wonderful pick me up after a hard day. We would often come home for lunch and we would ALWAYS check to see if we had post. And if we did, we would read it out loud while preparing or eating lunch. If we didn’t feel like sharing the whole letter, we would at least tell the news or the jist of the letter, or at least any funny parts. Because it’s not fun when your companion gets mail and you don’t. So we would share in our little joys.

I could count on about a letter a week from my family. Back then, a letter took at least a week to travel overseas, not like today when missionaries can check for email once a week or even text their families, so our questions were often slow to be answered, if at all. We were required to write to them once a week, too, and I can say that I Always did send off a letter to my folks. I could just imagine my mom freaking out if she had to go more than a week or two for a letter (sorry, mom). Since the price of postage to the USA was not cheap, I would often include one page letters or postcards or pictures for friends in my family’s letter, with a little note to “please send this to so and so”. What nice parents–they always forwarded them along. Of course, they probably read them all, too.

Ryan was by far my biggest letter writer. He was madly in love with me and had to convince me through his letters and packages that he was indeed the one for me, without actually coming out and saying it in those exact words. What can I say? His plan was to just inundate me with letters so I would fall in love with him. We’ve been married for over 15 years, so I guess it was a good strategy. While in the Missionary Training Center, he was almost obnoxious in the amount of letters he sent. This was back in the day when you could still hand deliver letters or packages, so he would just swing by the MTC on his way home from class and drop off a letter. And since he wrote to me while in class, and apparently his classes were extremely boring, because he would use his time to doodle extensive designs on the envelopes. Everyone in my MTC district knew by the envelope that a-the letter was for me, and b-that it was from Ryan. The guys in my district got a little bit protective of me, and did NOT like “that Ryan guy.” I have to admit, it was kind of distracting, and I almost told him to just buzz off and leave me alone. But I liked the packages too much, and wouldn’t want to cut that off, now would I? Little did I know, but the creative genius behind any and all fun packages was Ryan’s sister, Julene. Talk about a bait and switch–(Just kidding, honey).

During one long and hot summer in Mulheim on der Ruhr it had been a while since either of us had gotten any significant post from home, and as we checked the mailbox one afternoon, there was one lone postcard with a picture of BYU on it. It was from Ryan. Not much in the way of news or a letter, but at least it was something. I noticed that there was no postmark over the stamp. I decided to try an experiment and dropped it into the nearest mailbox. Sure enough, the next day or so, that postcard showed up in our mail. We must have dropped that same little postcard into the post six or eight times that summer. I’m sure our postman hated us. How obnoxious that they keep getting the same postcard. Dumkopf! But at least it was something in our lonely mailbox, instead of nothing.

At least back then, as a missionary, we didn’t have to receive stupid junk mail, bills, or notices from the IRS.

(And don’t forget, every comment gets us closer to that 2000 mark, where someone will win our comment prize!)