Whew!

It's been quite a week! Friday night, Rachel had her district songfest, which was a wonderful choral experience! I was so pleased with her efforts. She worked every night to learn her part and memorize all ten songs, stayed after school and gave up recess to practice with her music teacher. The music was difficult and unusual in some cases, but these little elementary students pulled it off and it was an outstanding performance. It took us two hours to get there but it was well worth the effort. It's a joy to see Rachel as excited about singing as I am!

Yesterday was our stake women's conference. I had to narrate the program and sing three songs but I am very sick (major sore throat, no voice and congested.) I prayed that it would go okay and although it wasn't one of my best performances, I was able to get through the three songs without sounding tooooooo terrible. The program was absolutely beautiful--it was about the ten virgins. The girls who played the 10 virgins did an outstanding job singing and their lamps and costumes were beautiful. We also heard two excellent talks by our stake leaders. President Dunford encouraged us to "do our very best" and not be too hard on ourselves and reminded us not to compare ourselves to others. This is something I do way too often and it can be very discouraging. I came away from the meeting spiritually fed so it was a great morning.

Today was a good day. Spencer didn't want to wear a long sleeve white shirt to church (shocker!) and we had some contention about that because I couldn't find his short sleeve shirt anywhere. I finally convinced him to wear a sweater (for the first time this entire winter) because Chris likes to wear them. Suddenly, he loved the idea of wearing a sweater. Having Chris and Melissa here has been such a joy for us! The kids just absolutely worship them.

The choir sang in sacrament meeting. It was a good performance. The hymn was arranged beautifully by our Bishop's wife, Julie Geissinger. She had several non-member family members attend to hear it. So it was especially meaningful to all of us and a missionary opportunity for Julie.

I am the Relief Society pianist (unfortunately for the singing sisters who have to listen to my clinks on the piano!) The closing song was "Lean on My Ample Arm." Have you ever heard it? The melody is not very pretty and for some reason, I kept picturing an extremely obese woman's floppy arm while I was playing the dreadful tune. I kept wondering if I was playing it right because it sounded so awful! The words are nice if you can get past the vision of a flabby, cottage cheese arm and focus on the real meaning of the song.

Choir practice, though sparsely attended, went well. We are almost ready for Easter. I came home and took a nap. While I was resting peacefully, Paul and the kids prepared dinner for me (I did put the roast in the crock pot this morning but they did everything else.) They even got me a birthday cake from Friendly's--Chocolate peanut butter ice cream cake--delicious and very soothing on my sore throat! Courtney was so cute tonight! She's got good taste. . . Paul asked her if she wanted a hot dog instead of roast and she said, "No, I want steak!" That's my girl! One of the highlights of my evening was talking to my parents, grandma, brother and sister-in-law who called to wish me a happy birthday! I am so blessed with such a loving husband, children, parents and family!