Piano Recital

Piano Recital

I enjoy teaching piano to my 7 students, plus 3 of my own kids. It makes for a short but sweet recital.

No video this year but here are some pictures of my kids. Each student performed a solo and a duet, with a family member when possible!

Revival Recital 2017

This amazing group of ladies (and one gentleman) did it again.

We put on a fantastic Revival Recital! 

Some of the faces change, most of the faces stay the same. 

Every woman contributes so much talent and joy and goodness to my life. I love the Revival Recital!!!

A collage of every one's performance

My harp performance. My first performance on the harp. Nerve wracking! Fulfilling!

May stuff

The middle of April, we got new chickens.

So we put our old chickens (3 yrs old) on the classifieds for free-

-to make room for 9 new chicks.

In May, we put the chicks out in the coop. They like it a lot better out there. But it is not even close to the joy I feel not having them in my house anymore!

In the chicken picture you may notice cousin Cooper! I was lucky enough to babysit Cooper, Milo and Coleman while Sarah and Dallin took an overnight trip. Saturday turned out to be quite eventful. 

Yes, the chickens went into the coop. 

Also, Sydney had MORP! 

And then, just as Sydney was coming home to get ready for her dinner date and the boys were ready to go to their home, I sliced my finger on a very dirty metal chicken feeder. 

I rushed to the Instacare and got 6 stitches, just in time to throw a messy dinner together and leave for a book signing. Whew!

So the book signing was fun. Mostly just us authors and a few family members who had already purchased books. So there were no sales. But it was fun to be together and read an excerpt from our stories.

I was first and I completely forgot to even introduce myself and went right into reading my story. All the authors after me introduced themselves, talked about the genesis of their story and read a longer excerpt. That was kind of embarrassing but I learned a lot so I guess that's good. (And thank you mom for coming to support me!)

Bryce left this note on my bed. It is soccer season right now and most of his friends are playing on teams. We usually don't start sports or lessons until 2nd grade. But he really wanted to play soccer. He informed me that he plays World Cup every recess and he knows all the rules and all the good plays.

For teacher appreciation week, I totally dropped the ball. I had an idea to make crochet bookmarks just for fun and thought, "Hey! Why don't I make them for the teachers?" They only take 15 minutes to make. So the morning of the last day of teacher appreciation week, we put together these little cards and they turned out awesome. I was pretty proud of myself for the pun. 

Book Mark my word. 

You are the GREATEST!

And then Rachel translated it for the spanish teachers. That makes me so proud!

LDS Storymakers Conference was May 11-13. I really enjoy going to this conference but oh my, I was on the biggest roller coaster. Thursday workshop I felt like the worst writer. Thursday afternoon I had some great ideas and knew how to fix everything. Friday, I decided I was finished writing. Saturday, I was totally motivated. I know I'm not the only one and most likely, every writer or the majority of writers feel this way. 

And every year I wish I had taken pictures. And I didn't. It was so fun to see Amy Wilson from CO again. We had the nicest dinner (with Tanya) on Friday night on Provo's center street. 

But this is the only picture I got. This is Nikki Trionfo, the ring-leader of the social side of Storymakers! 

She also published a book this year, "Shatter." I reviewed it on my Bookworm Wednesday blog. Its a great book and she's a great person. 

We had our end of year piano recital. It turned out great. Short and sweet at 30 minutes. 

Camille and Rachel talked me into doing Performing Arts Camp again this year. Yikes. One week to prepare! And notice the typo?!?!? 9:30am-11:00PM. What?!?!?!

We had some visitors on the front lawn. Ducks! They reside in the canal that runs through the subdivision and raise a family there every year. But they've never ventured this far from home before. 

More September stuff

More random September stuff. 

Piano lessons have begun and my music cabinet looks like this. I've got to pull myself together!

I wanted to do a yarn/crochet project and this is what I found. I put the project on hold. 

I found a package in my mailbox from the Laurel class. It was a sweet note and these beautiful home-made magnets! Sunshine poured out of the package and lighted up my entire day!

We had another night at Hale Center Theater to watch "Beauty and the Beast." It was really fantastic. So well done. And right before intermission, at the end of Be My Guest, they showered the audience with gold confetti. It was soooo fun!

The girls have started jump roping in preparation for the school jump team. They just keep forgetting to put on shoes. Can you tell?

We found a black widow on our front porch. I buried it in spider killing foam and it actually tried to claw its way out. Ooooo, it was gross! Perfect way to start Halloween month.

May stuff

I took Mill, Ray and Hash to the Hales Center Theater and we saw "Peter and the Starcatchers." It was well done but a little more mature than I anticipated. The kids enjoyed it, nonetheless. Our favorite part was when the pirates also played the roles of the mermaids and swung from gigantic swings hanging from the ceiling. It was AWESOME!

I had my end of the year piano recital. Everyone did a fantastic job. 

Ray and I decided it was time to go through our fingernail polish and throw out the old ones. So we tested all the colors out on our toes.

When the boys went on their annual Father and Sons overnighter, the girls and I went to dinner at Panda Express and then saw the movie, Kung Fu Panda 3. 

Rachel participated in the egg drop at the school. She shoved an egg into a jar of peanut butter. It didn't survive.

Rachel enjoys playing dress up.

Beautiful Millie!

I'm making progress on the blanket I started on our trip to South Dakota. It requires soooo much yarn. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it as long as I intended, but I love it all the same.

March stuff

And now,

for your entertainment,

a running list of random things that happened in March.

I love love love that Bryce goes over to our neighbor's house on an almost daily basis to get a handful of candy and other times he'll just go over to sit in the rocking chair and talk to Sal. That's a special relationship right there.

I also taught Hash how to play Colored Eggs, a game I used to play ALL THE TIME when I was little. They played it for an hour!


We had a day off of school in March (professional development) so we joined Sterling on Capitol Hill during the legislative session. We did this last year too. This year, we invited the Finkens and also ran into some neighbors, the Pease's. We had a lot of fun.

Chris Finken said something that made me chuckle. He said it was nice to see Sterling in his natural habitat. And to some, you may think Capitol Hill, surrounded by lobbyists is his natural habitat because its his job and what he does everyday. But really, his natural habitat is exactly the opposite. His true natural habitat is farm fields surrounded by crops or livestock. Sure love that man who can be comfortable rubbing shoulders with politicians but would rather be standing in a field somewhere.

This was a nice little note to see on my girls' piano notebook. Someone appreciates me!!!

Parker is doing well in scouts. He is cruising through it. He received his life award at this Court of Honor. And they always tell the boys to bring up their moms because in most homes, the moms do a lot to help. But in OUR home, I don't do a thing. Sterling does it all. But he always insists that I go up with Parker and Parker pin the parent emblem on me. This is the last time though. Because the next award is the Eagle and I refuse to take Sterling's glory. 

And PARKER! He's the one doing all the heavy lifting around here!

On the last day of the month, the younger three and I participated in the Stake Cultural Arts production, "Ponder the Path of thy Feet." It was a wonderful activity. During the rehearsals, the director would subtly teach the gospel principles the children were singing about. It was so wonderful. Besides the musical numbers, they also did a shadow box puppet play. Look at these puppets and set. It was AMAZING. Truly! I'm so glad we took the opportunity to get involved!

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

STUDY THE SCRIPTURES

MY TESTIMONY GROWS - This song was written by Mabel Jones Gabbott, my grandma. I was so thrilled when I found out this was the song we were singing. So grateful my girls got to learn this beautiful song!

Piano recital

My name is Karin and I teach my own kids piano.

That's why they didn't have piano lessons during the summer. Which makes perfect sense for me to put them in a piano recital in August.

 

No. No it doesn't make sense at all.

 

Although they only had 2 lessons before the recital, they did a great job.

 

I took one picture and the kids took 2 videos with the ipod.

 

The video missed Camille playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on her own, but catches our duet nicely. Especially the part where I mess up. And Sydney does a beautiful job on "Fur Elise." Especially her curtsy at the end.