Smarchness

This past Thursday we woke up to snow on the ground once again.

Noooooooooooooo

Fortunately, school was neither cancelled or delayed. Everyone was happy about that decision except for Katie, who woke up early, crawled into bed with me, and urged me to run downstairs to check for school district text messages.

Alas, poor Katie. School for you.

Other than that, life has finally gotten back to our normal pre-snowstorm life.

In other words, kind of ho-hum, nothing to see here. The kids had piano recital and did MAP adjudications (Eleanor didn’t place in the honors recital this year, although she was a runner-up).

We just finished a week of early-release days for William and Katie because of parent-teacher conferences (so . . . even less productivity on my part). Spoiler alert: the littles are doing great at school.

I made Polish “paczki” donuts for Fat Tuesday.

Yes, I know that’s not a religious observance I usually make, but I have a Facebook friend who lives in Detroit, and she posts dozens of paczki memes every year. So I decided to spend an early-release afternoon making them with the littles.

Second spoiler alert: I think we might make these every year. Yowza, delish.

On Friday afternoon, I performed Debussy’s “Sunken Cathedral” prelude at the community college winter recital — and I crushed it! It’s the first time that I’ve felt good about a public performance; and I think the kids in the audience noticed, too (several of them complimented me afterwards!). My teacher, Jensina, was so pleased she made “fist pumps” at me across the performance space.

I suppose the biggest event we’ve had lately is William’s participation in the Math Olympiad yesterday. It’s the first time one of our kids has participated in this event, despite past encouragement from me & Brian.

William loves puzzles and logic games, so it’s no surprise that he likes and excels at math.

Brian and I both signed on to be chaperones, which involved a lot of walking back-and-forth to keep our assigned teams company during test breaks. It was fun to hang out and talk, and to get to know the other parents and teachers.

The team that I chaperoned scored in the 3rd place ranking for all the 6th grade teams! And William scored in the 12th ranking for the individual tests. (His teammate scored in the 3rd place individual ranking).

The only downer was when we had to sit in the community college gym for a solid two and a half hours while waiting for the tests to be graded and awards handed out. This was a real drag, even though the kids were incredibly well behaved.

The organizers did their best, booking a variety of entertainment to watch during the grading period. Hip hop dancers, a martial arts demo, and best of all, a One Man Band. (Just like Bert from Mary Poppins!)

Even though William did pretty well for his first olympiad, Brian and I were exhausted by the time we got out of there. But to tell the truth, it was still a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to next year. William’s already talking about it!

Buuuuut the day didn’t end there! Yesterday evening, our ward hosted a “Spring Chicken Dinner” for members aged 50+. The youth were asked to come be food servers, and I was asked to come and play background music for the dinner.

Squee! I had just purchased a five-volume set of Piano Stylings of the Great Standards, so I was beyond thrilled to have an excuse to play a bunch of piano jazz.

I was quite literally jazzed.

All week long I practiced songs like “Moonglow,” “Embraceable You,” “Blue Moon,” “The Shadow of Your Smile,” “Bewitched,” and “Star Dust.” I had, it turns out, more than enough jazz to last through a three course dinner.

It was so fun to play all this music for people who appreciated it. I’ve always had a fantasy about performing in a jazz club. And best of all, many of the “spring chickens” came up afterwards and said how happy they were to hear songs that they remembered from their childhoods or young adulthoods. Yay! That was the idea!

And I’m sure that my family will be more than happy to get the Great American Soundbook out of their heads.