Various and Sundry Items of News

I apologize for the lack of posts this week. I'll try to get us all caught up in one simple, concise blog! Sorry...this is going to be long!

Janelle came down to on Thursday evening and spent the night so that I could get up and go in to church on Friday with Taigen and concentrate on going through all of the music files at the church.

I have been working through each file drawer s-l-o-w-l-y and pulling out every choir number, playing through it and rating it according to difficulty. This is what I mean:
A= I can play it easily!
B= I can play it with minimal practice.
C=Whoa! I need to practice this thing lots in order to play it!
D= Never in this lifetime can I play it!
(Let me just say that there are arrangers that you learn quickly are way out of your league. Yikes! You groan when you see their name on it and don't even want to try.)

Thankfully our choir director is flexible and understands that he has a makeshift pianist at his disposal (I was music education with a voice proficiency...not piano). I wanted to finish going through all of the music so that we could have a good idea about which numbers we can sing for this upcoming choir "season" (Sept.-June).

On Monday I signed the kids up for P.E. at a local gym. They have a wonderful home school gym program that is fairly inexpensive. Several of our other home schooling moms do this so it will also be a wonderful opportunity to fellowship with them while our kids are playing. I'm excited. That starts in September.

Janelle and I took the kids to the library and checked out 22 new books. They have pretty much completed all the requirements for the summer NH library reading program. We have read far more than what is required, but this delinquent mother has forgotten to write down all the books we've read. I better get on the ball and turn it in!

Taigen was also motivated to get some form of painting done on Monday and so he decided to tackle part of the kitchen. The kitchen was a light gray with leaves and grapevine painted on top of that. It didn't match any of my decor so we decided to paint over it. It didn't look terrible, but then, it didn't look great either. Here is the before: Since we're going with more color in the dining room, we decided to stay neutral and go with cream in the main part of the kitchen. It cleaned it right up! Taigen said that it is so satisfying to paint. You get almost instant results. Here is the after:The rest of the week Janelle has been here and we've enjoyed having her company. We ran some errands together on Tuesday one of which took us to Bed Bath and Beyond. We were looking for penguin art for the kids' bathroom when Shaylen came across these decorative circles. I had contemplated putting dots on Shaylen's wall in her room to add some color to her room and to bring in some pink from her curtains. I haven't found wallpaper that matches her shade of green! Shaylen had been asking periodically when she was going to get her wallpaper. After all, Marshall has had his up for quite some time.When we were looking at the art at BB&B, Shaylen saw the dots and circles and asked me what it was and whether or not she could have them. (Hmmm...Maybe Shaylen is getting her decorating senses already?) I looked at them, liked them and then looked at the price. They were discounted (from $29.00) and I also had a coupon. I ended up paying $7.00 for them. They look awesome (the picture really doesn't do it justice), up-to-date and kid friendly on her walls and coordinate with her bedspread and curtains beautifully. Shaylen even helped put them up! She loves them. Janelle left this morning to head back to Maine in order to get stuff done. It was a busy but great time with her. We love taking what time we can get with her before she takes off for Zambia in September.