The Piano Project

Well, about three weeks ago I got a crazy hair and decided to strip my piano and refinish it. I was definately crazy!! The piano is at least 55 years old. I found a signature inside it that had the date 12-4-52 so that is why I am guessing how old it is. It was given to us by Ben's mom and dad. It had been painted brown so the paint and the stain needed to be striped off. At first I was doing it by hand. Holy Cow! That took so long so then I borrowed some tools from my parents including a power disk sander. Ben got an attachment for his drill that worked really good too. He wasn't so happy that I dragged him into this project. Once we had striped and sanded the whole thing it we needed to stain it. My whole house was covered in dust. I filled my vacuum full! I am still cleaning up piano dust. The staining was the fun part. The hardest part was doing the legs and the music stand. The legs just took a long time because they had a lot of grooves in them. When I was doing the music stand I had to do most of it with a chisel. I missed and scrapped my hand really good. I have about a 3 inch scrap across the bottom of my thumb to my wrist. All for the beauty of the piano right! Well, I got the piano done, all except replacing the keys. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will get to that as well. Then it is on to making a piano bench to match it. ( We are using a chair right now.)

Well, the rest of the fam is doing good. We started potty training Max this week. It is going pretty well. He is kind of getting the hang of it. We have to use a lot of bribes though. His newest thing is he can make himself burp. The other day he was trying to burp and he couldn't so he said, "oh, lost it" then he finally burped and said, "got it". He is such a boy! He really likes Nemo. We have a book of fish and he looks at it all the time. He can name all kinds of fish. I think we might have to break down and get him a fish. If any of you know me, you know that is a big deal because I still have my fish phobia. We are going to Las Vegas in March and we are planning on going to the aquarium. I think he is really going to like it.

Isaac is still crying a lot. He is only happy when he is being held or sitting in his bumbo chair. He just doesn't like to lay down. He does like the tub. When he is really crabby we stick him in the tub and it calms him down. At least he sleeps good. He goes to bed around 8 and wakes up around 7. I am really lucky that way.

We had the opportunity to go to the Draper Temple open house. It was so beautiful! We had such a great time. The next day my family went to the Salt Lake Temple and went on the session that my grandpa and grandpa were apart of. It was so great to be in the temple with them. It was only my second time in the Salt Lake temple and it is so beautiful. It made me want to find out more about it like what it looked like inside when it was built and what changes they have made throughout the years and stuff. I am sure that there have been amazing things that happened in the temple. I hope that someday I will be able to ask Heavenly Father. I did find some really cool pictures of the inside of the temple that were in James E. Talmage's book that was published in 1912. They were all in black and white, but still very cool. I will have to do more studying. Maybe someday I could be part of the cleaning crew and clean the whole temple so I can see everything! That would be awesome.

Joy in the Journey Now

I attended Women's Conference today and it was just amazing! The theme was Finding Joy in the Journey Now. I had a few eye opening moments today that I thought I would share. I went to a class that was entitled Finding Joy in Parenting. During the class it reminded me of a precious moment I had with Max a few weeks ago. We have the late church schedule so before church Max and I made a tent in the living room out of our kitchen chairs and sheets. We got our pillows and blankets and cuddled up in the tent and watched his favorite, Finding Nemo. I thought of all the other things that I should or could be doing, the dishes, vacuuming, cleaning up the toys, etc. Then it came to me that Heavenly Father has given me a most precious spirit to teach and take care of. I only have one chance to teach him and create memories that he will have for the rest of his live. Then and there I decided that I wanted to give him the best experiences he can have on this earth. I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to stay home and give my boys the experiences that will shape their lives forever.

One of the speakers at Women's Conference made a comment that stuck with me. She said that happiness is always inside us. It is an attribute that we all have. There are so many good things in our lives that bring out that joy we have within us. I think Max and Isaac bring the most out in my live. Another speaker talked about how our lives are filled with the noise of the world and it causes us to not feel as happy as we could. She named 10 different "noises" in our life. The on that stood out to me was "stuff" in general. The world wants us to have stuff. Stuff is what will make us happy. It made me think about that happy times in my life and it was always with the people I love most and times when the spirit was so strong.

I had another big leap as a mom today. We went down and visited Tricia in Provo and Max had a sleep over with his uncles and Tricia. It is the first time that he has sleep away from home, except for when I was in the hospital with Isaac. It was a very strange feeling leaving Tricia's house and not taking Max with me. It was a little sad, but I knew that he was in good hands with people who loved him. As I drove home and I was contemplating that happenings of the day I thought how Heavenly Father must feel when he has to send us to this earth. He knows that it is for our good. Some he sends down knowing they are going to people who will love them and then there are some he sends down knowing what a hard life they are going to live. I am sure that he has a hard time sending some of his choice spirits down to this earth knowing the trials that they will face. I felt very grateful knowing that Max was in good hands. I am sure that he will have a great time, again creating those experiences to enrich his little life.

I am so grateful for the little pieces of Heaven I get to enjoy every now and then. I just felt like I should share the little insights that I had today.