tyler's principal award

Every year, each child at our school is recognized with a Principal's Award for something special they have done or achieved.  The teachers select a few students each month to be recognized at the assemblies.  Tyler received his this week.  This is what it is for:

"For having a love for learning, exceptional participation and insight during lessons, and having 100% in Science and 99% in Spelling"

The woman on the left is his teacher and the woman on the right is the Principal.

Tyler has also had perfect behavior and perfect attendance this first quarter of school. Congratulations Tyler - we are so proud of you! Keep up the great work!

primary program

This is not the way I envisioned this primary program post was going to be written.  Last month Natalie was asked to sing a special musical number for the primary program.  She was super excited and practiced hard.  It turned out to be a duet with Tatum, who is also five and one of her best friends.  They were to sing "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus!"  It was very cute and sounded great.  On Thursday after school Natalie's voice was scratchy and by Friday morning it was completely gone.  Horrible timing for her first case of laryngitis!  We forced her to be quiet for two days straight (an almost impossible task for a very social five-year old girl), in hopes that her voice would return and she would be able to sing.  We prayed hard and tried lots of different suggestions for remedies, but it wasn't meant to be. With tears in both of our eyes, we went to church and she participated the best she could in the program.  She probably would have tried to sing the duet, but I chose not to let her.  I would rather have her wait and sing as beautifully as I know she can at another time, than to have her sounding bad and possibly embarrassed.

Usually the primary program is my favorite Sunday of the year, but this time it was slightly depressing.  I was crying, Natalie was disappointed, and she wound up in tears by the end.  The whole program was fantastic otherwise, and most people probably didn't even realize anything was missing.  But as a parent it is heart-wrenching to see your child work so hard and then feel like a failure when they did nothing wrong.

I know she will have other future performances, but it was a challenging first try. So instead of having a cute video of the duet to share, a quick picture I took before church will have to do.

we read the book of mormon!

We finally finished reading the Book of Mormon with our kids for the first time! We started about three years ago and were only reading six verses a day, but we did it!  We are starting again and reading a page a day, now that their attention span is longer and two of them can read well, so hopefully we'll be done in about a year and half.   We didn't get it done before Brandon was baptized, but Tyler can proudly say he has read the entire Book of Mormon before he gets baptized next year.  And Natalie will be able to say she has read it twice (or possibly three times if we get even faster) before her baptism!

brandon's piano duet!

One of the "perks" (or curses) of having your piano teacher in your ward is that she volunteers you to play musical numbers at church! Last month she "asked" (told) Brandon that he was going to play a duet with her son Ethan, also 10 years old. I practiced with Brandon, and Buffie (piano teacher) practiced with Ethan, but the boys only actually played it together a few times. I had never heard them play it with each other until this video was taken right before church started (when Brandon gets nervous he laughs).

"I Pray in Faith"

I'm not sure who was more nervous - the moms or the boys - but they did WONDERFUL! They played it perfectly (even better than the video) and Brandon didn't laugh. I don't think I've ever been more proud of Brandon! I'm thankful for a piano teacher that forces him to do hard things.