Friday, November 27, 2015

November

Well, I successfully made it through another Thanksgiving! Anyone who had read my blog in years past knows I'm not generally a big fan of Thanksgiving. We usually spend it at home by ourselves and I spent a good portion of November being mopey about extended family issues, missing my dad and not really being able to go home for Thanksgiving. I'm a little sensitive about family issues all year long, and Thanksgiving is kind of a big reminder. 

So I usually spend the first part of November giving myself pep talks about how I'm not going to do that to myself this year, and by the time thanksgiving rolls around, the peptalks have failed and I'm in a funk.

But this year I did pretty good. Yay me. :) We've been incredibly busy lately for one thing, so there was less time for moping, and I'm somewhat busy with school, so my brain is busy. Plus I came up with a genius idea to get through Thanksgiving this year. One of my struggles every year is that my kids don't get very excited about a big Thanksgiving meal. They don't really like turkey all that much, so I don't really have any desire to spend the entire day in the kitchen cooking a meal that no one cares about. So every year I try a different plan to make a Thanksgiving meal that people will eat and be excited about. This year we figured it out! We found out that our favorite restaurant was taking orders for catered Thanksgiving meals, so we ordered it last week and all we had to do yesterday was pick it up. The food was fantastic, everyone loved it, I didn't have to spend all day cooking and cleaning in the kitchen and everyone was happy. We made a new tradition. Thanksgiving problem solved. 

After we ate dinner we all gathered around for our annual Amazing Race marathon. We always marathon a season of Amazing Race over the holidays. Usually an old one, but this year we were behind on the current one, so we watched most of the current season and caught up. We get really into it, cheer for our favorite teams, yell at the TV when the teams we hate do something dumb, it's a good time. :) 

So it was a good day. I crawled into bed last night happy and grateful for a wonderful family and a wonderful day. We celebrated the holiday in a way that was very "us", and it was fun. I love my family and the chance we had to spend the day laughing and enjoying each other. 

And now that Thanksgiving is over I can start thinking about Christmas, which I love! The exciting thing this year is that my mom and stepdad, who have been doing missionary work for our church in Malaysia for the past 18 months, are coming home in a few weeks! I can't believe how fast 18 months have gone by. We're excited to see them again and we're planning to take a couple of quick trips to my hometown in the middle of December and first part of January to see them. 

Oh, and one last thing, in college news, I have officially registered for next semester. When I started this whole college plan, it was kind of scary and really overwhelming to me, so I told myself that I would simply sign up and commit to one semester and go from there. Well, I'm getting A's in both of my classes this semester, I'm doing great, I'm getting used to studying again and I'm confident that I can keep going. I only have a few more weeks left of this semester. Tackling a Masters degree is still really overwhelming to me, so I'm going to continue to take it one semester at a time. I can do it if I just focus on the tasks in front of me and not think too hard about what's down the road. Next semester is math. I'm not going to lie, I'm a little scared! But I'll get through it, and I'll keep going, one semester at a time. I'm kind of proud of myself for doing this. I can do hard things. :) 

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Plays and Piano

It was a big week for my boys! Wednesday night we got to see Josh perform in a play and Saturday night we got attend Matthew's piano recital.

A few months ago a friend called Josh and said that she was auditioning for a play that our church was putting on and wanted to know if Josh wanted to tag along. He had nothing better to do that morning, so he said sure. He got there, auditioned, and the next thing he knew he had one of the bigger parts!

So he has spent the past couple of months working really really hard to memorize his lines and has spent a lot of time at play practice. It was a Christmas play about the birth of Christ called Savior Of The World. I honestly didn't know a whole lot about it, except that it has been taking up a lot of his time lately, so I was excited to go on Wednesday and see it.

They performed it for about 1,000 people Wednesday night. He did an amazing job! This is the first time he's ever done anything like that. The whole play was beautiful and it was so fun to see him on stage.

Here are two pictures from the dress rehearsal!



Then last night was Matthew's piano recital. He has been working on the song Let It Be, by the Beatles for a while. I've heard this song played daily for a couple of months now. The whole family walks around humming it. He worked really hard on it and it was so fun to hear it played last night. Our piano at home isn't fancy and while it sounds fine, I always get really excited to hear him play on the grand piano at the recital hall. It sounds amazing on a fancy piano! I was really proud of him for all his hard work. Here's a video of his performance! 



He also performed the song he wrote, Summer Storm, last night, which was really fun. It's fun for him to be able to share his talent. He really loves to perform for people, and I love listening to him play.

So it was a fun week watching the boys perform and share their talents in public! I'm really proud of both of them.