Mother's Day 2009

This Mother's Day, our Primary children sang during sacrament meeting. The Music Leader had chosen "An Angel To Watch Over Me" by Sally DeFord and we had been practicing it for over 2 months. I have never considered myself an extremely accomplished piano player and so I was very nervous about accompanying the Primary children. But what I lacked in ability, I almost made up for in determination. I knew that I would never play the piece perfectly, but I hoped that I would be able to play it with minimal mistakes--I wanted so badly to do it. I practiced that song more than I have practiced any other song. I played through nearly every day at least once. At the beginning, it didn't sound so great. One month into it, it was sounding okay, but I was doing a lot of skipping over notes. I kept practicing and although I didn't improve much in the last month, my knowledge of the piece improved to the point where I felt confident that my fingers would move on their own for most of it, and that if I messed up very badly, I would be able to pick up again quickly. During our last practice in Primary, 2 hours before we were supposed to sing, I was so nervous! I messed up in places that I had never messed up in before! But I had prayed and I knew that I had done all I could do. When it was time to sing, I walked up and sat down at the grand piano. I am very unaccustomed to playing a grand piano, and it is tricky because the music is higher so it is more difficult to cheat and look at your fingers when you need to. But I just took a deep breath and when everyone was ready, I began the introduction. As the children started singing and I continued playing, I could feel the Spirit's peace fill me. I listened to the words that those little angels were singing and tears filled my eyes at the sweetness of the song. Through the course of it all, I missed a couple of notes and I played a couple of wrong ones. But I think I played that song better than I had played it previously and better than I had hoped to! I know the Lord blessed me and that He had been watching over me as I played for this Primary choir. As I returned to my seat, brushing away tears, I looked at my husband whose eyes were also wet. He knew how much I had been worried about playing the song, and I knew he was rejoicing with me. I saw many other people in the congregation who were also very obviously touched by this sweet song. I share this song with you, sweet mothers and children of sweet mothers, and hope you will be touched by the message.

An Angel To Watch Over Me
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It's Ready

After weeks of hemming and hawing over a name for my new cooking/homemaking blog, the moment has finally arrived. Today I am officially launching Adventures in Homemaking. I'm sure you'll all be thrilled that I'm no longer posting such boring things like recipes and cleaning tips on my personal blog. I hope you will enjoy reading the new blog as much as I will enjoy updating it!

To be or not to be ...

This week my hubby took me to Shakepeare's Tavern for a special treat. We went there on our first official date, just over a year ago, and saw A Midsummernight's Dream. We laughed our heads off during that one. We were so impressed by the artistic and comical ability of the actors! This week was the last showing of Hamlet, so we went on Thursday (half-price tickets) and despite being a tragedy still laughed our heads off at parts of it. I would highly recommend Shakespeare's Theatre to anyone living in this area. We also ate dinner there; I got a Cornish Pasty and Ben got the Shepherd's Pie. The play was fantastic, the food was awesome, and it was very special to reminisce about where we were one year ago.