Superpaige's Pad

The Trials of a Busy Mom

Author: Superpaige (Page 27 of 180)

Work in progress

January 13, 2013 / / 2 Comments

We spent all of Christmas break working on the basement, and my mom for one has asked how it’s going. So, for my mom and the other two people who might read here, I’ll include a little bit of an update.

Pictures! Where are the pictures? My camera has stopped communicating with the computer, or maybe it’s the other way around, but I can no longer upload pics from my camera to my computer, which makes it difficult to put them in a blog post.

But thanks to Ryan uploading them to the family website, we DO finally have some pictures and stories from our current home improvement projects. We started painting Megan’s room on a Saturday. We got the girls to help us tape and do some of the edges.

I had let Megan pick her own color, and she went with this bright blue.

When the edges were done, we loaded up our paint stick and I started to roll. It’s my favorite part, when the paint starts to come through the roller and you can finally put some color on the wall.

As soon as I started rolling, there was fuzz from the roller in the paint. What? I picked a bit out, and rolled some more, but more and more and more fuzz was ended up on the wall.
Ack!

The roller, which I had bought about a year ago (but had NEVER been used) was disintegrating all over my wall! Drat.
Well, that was the end of that roller, and it ended up in a heap on the floor, while we went to find another roller as quickly as possible.

We already knew they didn’t carry Black and Decker Paint rollers at Ace Hardware, but hoped Walmart might have a replacement roller. No. So, a trip to the Home Depot was next. Ugh. They didn’t have replacement rollers that fit, so we just bought a whole new paint stick system. While there, I picked out a color for Cole’s room, and Ryan picked up a battery powered paint edger “handy” gadget thing.

Whatever.

But since we have a lot of painting to do, maybe that really will be helpful. Ha.

Once we got home, we loaded up paint in the NEW paintstick thingy, and started rolling away. Ryan loaded up paint in his new edger thingy and started painting the edge of the wall right next to the ceiling. Once he got it started, it wasn’t really all that helpful. When he pulled back on the lever to load up more paint into the syringe thing, it snapped off, and somehow sliced into his finger. Bleeding all over the place, we tried to get him a bandaid and put away that contraption without getting blood everywhere (he actually did drip a drop of blood into the paint, but we got it out quickly with a paper towel).

Not a super successful painting day, if you ask me.

And not just in painting, either. Our friends Sarah and Jacob had spent the night Friday, and were ready to leave on Saturday. They were going to meet their mom in Orem, then they would all drive home to Arizona. They got to the end of our street, and when they slid on the ice a bit, their van just died. Ryan got a phone call asking him to tow them back here, and then their mom later called a tow truck to take the van away, where it was later confirmed that the transmission had finally given up the ghost, and it would be about $2K to get that fixed. Still needing a car to get them home to Arizona, Robin scoured the ads and found an old car on Craig’s list for not too much money. When she went to check it out, she took it for a pre-purchase test drive. While testing, she gunned it, stopped suddenly, took it on the freeway, and tried everything she could to discover any hidden defects. Not finding anything major, she bought the car, only to have it stop and refuse to start about a mile away from where she had bought it. Two truck number two took that one away. Her kids, still at my house, were getting restless, until Robin and Ron finally came and got them later that afternoon. I, however, wasn’t there at the time as I was taking my daughter who had missed the first two day of school in January to the after cares clinic to diagnose and treat a nasty UTI. I tell you, it really was a stellar day.

But that’s just an aside to our story about paint. Ryan and I continued to paint that room until it was blue, blue, blue.

And the girl was happy with the results!

One wall was left unpainted. She wants that wall white and says she’s going to paint a mural on it. We’ll see.

On Monday I did the touch ups for that blue room, and then started on Cole’s room.


Here’s the before shot.

As I started painting the Behr “Garden Wall”, I realized it was far more BROWN and much less GRAY than I wanted. Ugh. Not exactly what I had been going for, and the more I painted, the less I liked the color.

By dinner time, I was getting downright discouraged, and quite tired of painting.


(Sorry that pic is kind of blurry, but it’s the only one that shows a mostly finished wall)

I even tried painting one of the walls green, so see if I liked that combo better. John said, this wall is like a toad (pointing to the brown) and this wall is like a frog (pointing to the green). Thanks, John, but that doesn’t really help.

The next day I went and ran some errands (one of which included returning that stupid power edger to Home Depot), returned some Christmas things, and went to Ross to look for inspiration in the form of a pillow or maybe a bedspread. I found a really cute couple of pillow that are going to help me with my future family room, and a bedspread that I thought would go really well with the BROWN in Cole’s room.

I got that room mostly finished, and just need to do a couple of touch ups.

There’s more going on, but I will leave that for another post. Someday we’ll have some actual “after” pictures, but for now, I’m just thrilled that we are making progress.

Christmas in pictures

January 9, 2013 / / 0 Comments

I didn’t really tell much about our Christmas. We’ve been so busy I have hardly had time to go through all the pictures.

Christmas eve we changed things up a bit. We decided to go out to dinner at our favorite Mexican place, Los Hermanos.

We had hosted back to back parties, and I didn’t want to do another party for Christmas eve, so it was just our family. It was snowy and icy all day, too, so I didn’t want to make the grandparents travel.

On Christmas morning, the kids were all up by 7, waiting for us. Don’t you love how some of them can’t even wait a FEW minutes without a book?

Santa had come, and been kind.

And so had Mom and Dad.

Chaos? Yep, pretty much.

The kids all got pretty much spoiled, what with gifts from Santa, Mom and Dad and all their brothers and sisters. I don’t know if Larissa had experienced such a big chaotic Christmas with so many people ever before. As part of the family, she exchanged gifts, too.

Later, the grandparents came over for dinner and game playing.

Ryan had made my dad and his dad a cribbage board. Made it himself!

As for my gift, Ryan got me about $500 of paint.

Awesome!!

Right after Christmas, he and Cole went to work.

They got the walls primed, the ceiling painted, and the trim painted. Unfortunately, my computer is not recognizing my camera anymore, so it’s difficult to get more pictures up, but soon I’ll tell you about our painting COLOR and the disasters that ensued there.

It was a wonderful Christmas season.

Goodbye favorite skirt–you will be missed

January 7, 2013 / / 0 Comments

To assure that I wouldn’t just pull this skirt out of the donate bag and wear it in a pinch, I cut it up and made some wheat bags.

Because I seriously have loved this skirt. It’s been my go-to skirt for about 8 years. I wear it to church, I wear it to rehearsal, I wear it to school. It doesn’t roll up on the ends, it doesn’t need ironing, and it goes with everything. But sadly, it ripped up the back (not on a seam) and I guess it’s time to move on.

The year of the chimes

January 1, 2013 / / 2 Comments

As I look over the past year, I realize that 2012 could be called the year of handbells for me. I know, every year is the year that I play handbells, but this year I REALLY played handbells. It began early in the year when I started thinking about attending the Area 11 handbell festival that was going to be held in Salt Lake City. How fun would that be? Stay at the Little America and go to classes and practice sessions for 3 days? I had to decide and register early, and if I went to that convention, it would mean I couldn’t be in a play in the summer like I usually do. I decided to go for it, and I joined the Handbell Musicians of America Guild in March, and signed up for the convention.

Then, in May, I attended the PTA convention, and while at a class on the arts, I had a very strong impression that I should be doing something with Handbells. Because of one amazing teacher and one year of playing bells in high school, that led to an opportunity to audition for a bell choir as an adult. I have had 8 amazing years with the Bells on Temple Square, but I can actually be more than just a bell ringer. I can be a teacher, and share my love of music in other ways.

The convention ended up being SO MUCH FUN, (http://paige.ericksonfamily.com/?p=6467)and really got me excited about how I could share my love of handbells with others.

The four hour class I attended on starting and directing a handbell choir wasn’t all that much help, but it did get me thinking about what I would do if I could actually start a choir. My enthusiasm was great, and while things didn’t exactly fall into place, I did secure a one year chime loan grant and was able to start a chime choir at the elementary school in September.

With no money, no budget, no music, and no experience, I set out to get kids to sign up and come play in my new chime choir! Since our school already has an established band and orchestra program, I thought we could just add to that and everyone would be excited. I quickly discovered that I would have to do some convincing, and enthusiasm alone are not enough to get a program going. The band teacher was downright rude and discouraging when I approached her about a new chime choir. “We already use the stage every single morning, so I don’t see how that would work.” But I persevered, send home a note asking for kids to sign up, and figured out with the principal an alternate location for our rehearsals.

I read the beginning books, and decided upon a lesson plan for our first couple rehearsals, and dragged the two heavy boxes of chimes to school for our first 7 am rehearsal. I had brought Jenna and John, and they were it. Not one other student. The three of us set up a table and put out the chimes and I showed them how to ring, and what the notes meant while we waited for the others to come. There were no others. At 8:00, my kids went to class, and one other student came. One. I had known that he has signed up, but he was the only one. One real student. I could do even less with him than with Jenna and John, but again, I showed him how the notes go in order, how to ring, how to dampen, and we played a few chords.

The next day, it was the same story. Jenna and John and I made some little posters advertising our choir, and stuck them up around the school. And in my 8:00 class, I had two students come. I was SO excited that I had two actual students! Still not much I can do when I’ve got two kids in each group, but at least I had four, if you counted my own kids. I went and talked to the principal and asked what he thought I should do. Since the school schedules are staggered, I had to offer the class to both groups. He suggested I try an after school time for the early kids. While at first I wasn’t thrilled about coming in to the school before school AND after school, I decided to give it a try.

Our numbers SLOWLY grew as more kids signed up. By the end of November, I finally had 12 kids signed up, which is enough to play all the notes. Of course, half of the kids came in the morning before school and half came after school, so they never really could hear how the song was supposed to be played until the last week when we all had to come early in the morning for rehearsal.

Our Christmas concert really was great. I wrote all about it here

I applied for a big grant from Clorox, just imagining what I could buy with $25,000. Sadly, I couldn’t rally up enough support, and we ended in 130th place. I have applied for many grants. Some for $500, and some for $5000. Many of them have turned me down. It’s discouraging, especially when two of my handbell friends received grants to buy thier handchime sets from a certain company, and that company turned me down. But I have many more applications out there, and several more to apply for this year.

Now I am picking out music and hoping more kids sign up for our second semester. Who would have thought at the beginning of 2012 how much would change for me. I had NO intentions of starting a chime choir, and now look at us–we’ve already performed (and done well) in our first concert! I brought the chimes home for Christmas and used them at two family Christmas parties

So, I will look back on 2012 as the year of the chime choir.

Who knows what 2013 will bring. I may not get funding for next year, and this might be it. I might get burned out from my volunteer job and decide it’s not really worth my time. But I just might get one of these grants, buy our own set of chimes, buy music and table covers, and maybe even buy a baton! We’ll have to see!

Amazed

December 20, 2012 / / 1 Comment

What a wonderful week! I feel so very lucky to not only attend the Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert every year, but I get to be there for every performance, and even perform with the choir. We do the concert four times, and the conference center seats 21,000, so that’s roughly 84,000 people who can attend. That seems like that would accommodate everyone who wants to see the concert, right? But there are over a million requests for tickets. Every year I hear people complaining that they have NEVER gotten tickets, even though they try every year. That’s why it’s so wonderful that PBS carries the concert the following year, so everyone can have a chance to see it.

Every year the choir puts on quite a show, but this one was extra special. It’s hard to describe how touching and joyful the concert was. The story of Gail Halverson, the candy bomber was especially touching, and to have Alfie Boe there singing Bring him Home brought me to tears.

As a bell choir, we usually play in the processional, play a little part in the dance number in the middle, and we always play in Angels from the realms of glory at the end. Some years we are lucky and get to play in a fourth song. This year, we played Jingle Bells for the overture, then made a quick switch and came back to play in the last part of the processional, and then we didn’t play again for the whole program. Our director jokes that we would have plenty of time to go to crown burger (which is an inside joke, because during the concert our very first year, a couple of the guys did go to crown burger in their tuxes, and brought back 15 junior hamburgers and fries–enough that we could each have half a burger and half an order of fries!) We did not, however, make it over to crown burger. They had set up a tv with sound up in our concrete bunker area where they store chair and things, and that was our little hangout place.

Thursday night, we all watched the concert in awe and wonderment, laughing at the camera flub ups, and cheering at the wonderful moments. We commented when they showed choir and orchestra members that we are friends with, and laughed when Alfie Boe said, “Couldn’t you find a bigger place?” He was light and funny, and joked about his next medley of Led Zeppelin songs. But when he sang Bring him Home, we were silent. We had all heard him sing that before on the Les Miserables show that PBS broadcasts during pledge week, but to be in the same building as he was singing it was simply amazing. When he was done, we clapped and cheered, and some of us wiped away tears.

During the concert, some people worked on their crocheting, or knitting, some read books, others played a game.

When the story of the the candy bomber was told, we all listened intently. Tom Brokaw’s telling of the story was calming and mesmerizing. I knew that the actual Candy Bomber, Gail Halverson, was going to be there, but I had no idea there would be little parachutes falling from the sky!

Well done!! We gasped right along with the audience, and wiped away tears. It was an amazing story, told in heartful honesty.

After that narration, we had to go and get our bells for our last number, so we didn’t really hear the rest of the concert, but we were so thrilled to have been able to see that much all together.

And that was just the FIRST night!

In light of Friday’s horrible events, we came to the conference center a bit downtrodden and sad, wondering how there could be so much evil in a person to kill innocent children. While we didn’t want to say goodbye to our precious families, we were so grateful to be doing something we loved, with people we love. At the beginning of Friday night’s concert, Lloyd Newel asked everyone to participate in a moment of silence for all those who were hurting and had lost loved ones. Everyone was silent. 21,000+ people, sharing a moment of respect and sadness. But sadness turned to joy once the amazing concert started once again.

I had determined to get a few pictures with some of the cast this year, so I took advantage of some down time to find a few groups and get some pictures with them.

Here I am with some dancers. I fit right in, right?

This is my favorite security guy, Toby, who I only see once a year at concert week, but he tells me stories of what drama has been going on on the square, or if someone threw up or got sick during the concert. Did you know there are defibrillators hidden around Temple Square? Cool!


In my spare time, maybe I’ll learn to play the bass?

Our “spot” was up and off stage right, which is where the men of the choir line up and then file in. I sat and watched while they all went by in their black tuxes, and it seriously made me dizzy.

Friday night, a few of us stayed overnight. We had some plans change and a last minute cancellation because our friend Liz here broke her foot right before the concerts started, and wasn’t able to be with us.

So Shaury and I shared a room, and Linda had her own room at the Hampton Inn. It’s so nice to NOT have to drive the hour home and the hour back! Especially when the weather is bad.

I had tried to fight the crowds at Deseret Book to get my Alfie Boe CD signed and maybe a picture, but it was just TOO crazy, and I gave up after a while. I was simply too tired.

Saturday morning we were able to sleep in a bit, have a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, then do our hair and makeup while watching a movie on tv. At 1:00 we headed over to the conference center for our day of recording. We had also planned to take a new group picture of our group, so after we recorded our songs with the choir, we did some posing.

So we piled into an elevator up to the 5th floor where our photographer and director had scouted out a good spot. We ended up taking a lot more pictures than just the group picture.

Goofy faces…

And interesting things you can do with bells. Dunce caps, maybe?

And how about how bells are born?

Have you ever heard of a bell tree? It really is something we use in bells, but not quite like this.

Going up? Or maybe down?

After the recording session, the choir, orchestra, bells and dancers shuffle over to the church office building cafeteria for dinner. They treat us right there, and the price is nice (free!). But we usually eat too much and then are sluggish and tired before the Saturday evening performance. But we pulled it together!

We found some more friends who wanted to take pictures with us

Tried on the cute newsies caps, and oh yeah, did I mention I got to meet and take a picture with Alfie Boe?

He was so warm and gracious and allowed lots of picture taking, even if he really felt like just getting back to his dressing room to lie down. I’m so glad I got to see him and personally thank him for sharing his voice with us.

By the end of the night Saturday, we were exhausted. So glad we had our hotel room again so we didn’t have to drive all the way home just to turn around and come back by 7:30 Sunday morning. On our way out, who should we see, but Mitt Romney! He was coming out the back after the show. I tried to just put my bells away and keep out of his way, but other in our group got pictures or shook his hand. As I was walking down the corridor with a fellow bell ringer, we stopped and looked back to see where our friend Linda was. She was right behind us. And walking toward us down the hall, there was Mitt and his lovely wife Ann. When they got to us, he said, “Good job tonight,” and we said “thank you.” Governer Herbert and some security were right behind. Cool!

Sunday morning was another concert, and my family came to see that one. My heart was full. It had been such an amazing week full of blessings and joy. We were excited to play for the prophet again, and kind of sad that the week would be over. After the Music and the Spoken word broadcast, we had to make a really quick bell change. One of the guys had been suffering with plantar faciitis (No idea on the spelling there) for the week, so I offered to get the bell he needed from two flights down. Once our song was over, we literally RAN out of there, down the stairs, through the backstage area, found our new bells, and RAN back up. I had almost made it and was breathing heavily. Then came the last step, and I missed it. Splat. 5 bells on the ground, with me looking oh so graceful on that last step, surrounded by dancers and other bell players.
This one dancer was so sweet, “Are you ok?” Totally embarrassed and angry at myself, I brushed it off and grabbed those bells, and ran into place. Sigh. We had one more song later in the mini concert, and I limped down to change my bells. Ugh.

When Bring him Home was sung that last time, I started crying. With Cole leaving on a mission soon, it just hit too close to home, and emotions from the week came pouring out. I got myself together and made it through the last song. After the gifts were presented, the Choir did a special number for Tom Brokaw’s wife, Merideth. Her Birthday is on Christmas, and she has always said that when the choir sang the Hallelujah chorus, she thought it was sung just for her. So they sang it just for her. I was in the isle on the men’s side, between the baritones and the basses, and the Hallelujah chorus has never sounded better. The tears came again, I was so touched.

It was a wonderful week, and one I will never forget.

Travel to Bethlehem

December 18, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Our ward put on a wonderful night in Bethlehem activity. It was so well done! I was totally impressed. Please ignore the stupid look on my face. I came late and was just eating my chicken and pita bread when this picture was snapped.

There were even animals out in the stables.

These pictures are all from our neighbor Steve Goering. You can see more on his photo share site.

My applause go to all those who planned and carried this event out. It was tons of work, but such a special night.

Random December

December 9, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Some stuff that’s been going on here. I don’t really have time to elaborate on everything, but I’ll show some pictures.


Now that they have a cozy warm house, the chickens have been more regular in their egg laying. But every once in a while we get an especially small or large one.


Here’s the little gift that the cat left on the doorstep for us. I guess that means she has accepted us as her family?


John felt he needed a mustache. Not sure why he had to do it with a sharpie, but it eventually came off.


We took the family to Thanksgiving Point to see the lights there. There were even reindeer!


I took the kids bowling. I was really only going to bowl ONE game, but they had a special text in offer so we got two games for the price of one. Fun times, even though we were NOT the best bowlers. Halfway through our second game, a whole group of cute guys came in and all bowled together. A league of some kind. We weren’t intimidated at all.


A portion of the Bells on Temple Square were there last Sunday in the conference center to record a little something in response to this..

I don’t exactly know where or when that will air, but we did it.


Here’s my lovely Natalie right before her choir concert. I hemmed her annoyingly slippery dress this week for her, and she did GREAT in her concert.


We had a wonderful Christmas present delivered this week…sheet rock!


The hangers came and got the whole basement hung in one day. Wow! I think they are coming this week to do some mudding and taping. Woo-Hoo!

On December 7th, it was St. Nikolaus Tag, which is when St. Nikolaus comes and brings candy and gifts to the good children. So, in our shoes were treats, and we even woke to little stockings with our initials on them.

More pictures and stories to come!

Hooray! Our first concert went great!

December 8, 2012 / / 5 Comments

Friday was our concert with the band and orchestra. We had some early morning practices during the week, and then we got there at about 6:40 on Friday morning to set things up.

We planned to have the tables on the floor for the assemblies during the day, and up on the stage for the performance for the parents at night, but after looking at everything, we realized that would be SUCH a pain to move everything, so the principal and custodian raised our tables about 18 inches and the kids stood on the first step. I think it worked out just fine, and we didn’t ruffle any feathers insisting we move the tables up on stage. Those lovely red table covers are courtesy of my friend Janeen. It helps to have friends who are already teaching chime choirs in schools, because they can give advice, share music, and even let me borrow table covers. Of course, now I want to buy some fabric and make my own, but that can come later.

Here’s my group (minus two of them, who were running around who knows where) posing in front of the tables while the orchestra practices behind.

Here’s a couple of pictures that one of the moms took of the group while we were practicing.

She even got one of my leading them.

Even though one of my students couldn’t be there for the evening performance, we covered things pretty well. I think they did SO great! I think people were impressed that they could recognize the songs we played, and that it even sounded good. We played Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star, Jingle Bells, and Jolly Old St. Nicholas. Little did I know that the band and orchestra would be playing those Christmas songs as well. But since we went first, people weren’t tired of the songs YET. My husband said he was surprised at how well they sounded. (Amazed is more like it.)

I got this message from one of the moms today,
Paige – Thank you so much for teaching M— chimes. I was so impressed tonight at the concert. Talk about a proud Mom moment. I didn’t realize how amazing chimes were, how beautiful they sound, how fun they are to watch and how much they have all learned in such a short time. I was beaming.

Thanks for all your hard work!

Love – M’s Mom

That brought tears to my eyes! This is why I am doing this! To bring the love of music and handbells to kids and parents.

The whole concert went quite well. The band teacher talked about how important music programs are, and plugged her band and orchestra program, telling the parents all about when to sign up and what they would be doing next semester, and she didn’t mention a word about the chime program. But maybe next time I will take the mic and do my own announcing. But hopefully enough kids will have thought it was cool and will sign up in January. I would love to have enough kids to ring all the notes in BOTH the am and the pm groups.

For now, we take a break from the chimes so I can concentrate on ringing bells for the Tabernacle Choir concerts next week. That worked out nicely.

Voting is still going on in the Clorox contest, if you would please vote HERE, that would be helpful. I still don’t know how I will finance a set of chimes for next year, but I’m hopeful it will work out.

Here are some (low-quality — sorry!) videos of the 3 songs that Ryan captured on his phone:

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