Elders' Quorum Social

Last night our ward had a social. I had already planned on making chili for a family in our ward that just had a baby last weekend, then I found out that the Elders' Quorum social was going to be a chili feed. Convenient for me! So I made a vat of it, and we dropped some off at the Walkers, then headed to the church. We were a little late, and they were very glad to see us because it was a pretty small group. What I also didn't realize was that it was a cook-off with judging. Everyone was invited to cast a ballot (I abstained since I cooked), and there were 4 categories: best looking, best tasting beans, hottest, and best overall. To my surprise, I tied for hottest; and to my utter delight, I won best overall by a landslide! Granted there were only 4 entries, but it still made me really happy. I never thought back in the days when I was winning local, regional, and national awards both as an ensemble singer and soloist that I could get such gratification from something so small. I suppose recognition for whatever one is currently involved in is nice in any capacity, and my domestic efforts are at the moment taking center stage, as they should be :). Carolyn also expressed a new interest at the socail: fashion design. She decided that my outfit was entirely too drab and would look much better if she dumped a bowl of chili on it.

Busy Bee

Carolyn is a very busy girl. Much too busy, in fact, for nonsense like diaper changes. The other day while we were at DeLayna's (I'm Eva's nanny for the summer), I had to wrestle her (Carolyn, not Eva) to the ground no less than 5 times. Then I had to let go of her to get the new diaper. By the time I grabbed it and unfolded it, she had rolled over and was crawling away with her jeans around her ankles. Nice. You'd think a 27-yr-old woman would be able to handle an infant. Apparently not! :)

It couldn't last

Carolyn has now realized that the living room does in fact lead into the kitchen. Nice. She is also trying to pull herself up to things. I fear I may have a walker within a month! Time to get a play yard to keep her safe from all of the many, many power cords in our apartment :).

Crawling!

My sweetest girl is growing up so fast! She started crawling this week. It still needs some fine-tuning, but she gets around wherever she wants to go! At the moment, she doesn't realize that she can crawl into the kitchen from the living room. So that's nice for now but I know it won't last long. She also cut two new teeth this week - her top front. That makes 4 total now. Well, one good one (bottom left), and 3 nubs. She was REALLY cranky for a couple of days while they were cutting through, so it was a huge relief for us both when it finally happened. It makes Mama so sad when she is totally inconsolable. Another noticable develpomental milestone that happened recently is taking verbal cues. she will do "Boogie boogie boogie" without the physical cue, and yesterday she started clapping when I said "Yay" in a different context. What a smart girl!

Almost total vocal inactivity and pregnancy hormones . . .

Almost total vocal inactivity and pregnancy hormones . . . apparently can do a lot of good! I went almost a year between my last vocal jury and my summer lessons before Dr. Reich left for BYU, and I haven't really had occasion to test my operatic chops since then. Well, I am going to sing "O Divine Redeemer" in church on Sunday. I prepared it for my senior recital but had to cut it because of time issues. Dr. Reich and I worked it again last summer, but then I was too pregnant to sing it in public so it had just been shelved until last week. I had a little run-through with my accompanist (Cathy Gibb who was the Opera Theater's costumer, and served with her husband in the branch for a while until recently returning to our ward). I have to say I was really nervous that I would dust the cobwebs off my instrument and find it altered and not know what to do with it. Well, I did find it altered, but mostly just in that I have more color, which is an effect that motherhood generally has. But I was very happy and relieved to find that I still had control and consistency, and yeah, with the added color, it wasn't too bad! I had another rehearsal yesterday (it is Gounod, after all), and it went really well. Cathy had something to finish up when I first arrived so I sat down and took myself through some exercises, and found that I haven't lost any range (operatically that is. My jazz whistle tones are not what they used to be, but outside of singing lead in a vocal jazz ensemble, it's pretty useless anyway), in fact I used to max out at a high C and yesterday I had a solid high D. It doesn't seem like it would make that much of a difference, but that will open up more repertoire to me. I suppose that I should have had more faith in the hard work I did and the instrument and foundations of technique the Dr. Reich and I had built.

So I am offically announcing that I will be doing a recital next summer - date TBA. If anyone has a preference, let me know! I continued to study weekly with Dr. Reich for a year after my senior recital, so I have a good amount of new repertoire. If I add a few more things, I'll definitely have enough for a good solid recital. Yay!

This is why we get the extended warranty . . .

After pumping over $1,000 into my car for general upkeep and maintenance, we found out that my A/C compressor needed to be replaced. It was a long process with a ridiculous amount of bumps in the road, including a clerical error at the DMV last October which put false information on my carfax report making my warranty void, the fedex box containing my parts getting lost, issues with the title, and discovering that when the part broke it sent metal shooting through several more parts. Finally after a month of taking my car back and forth from the Hyundai dealership in Yakima, dealing with the DMV, faxing info back and forth, my car is back with a brand new A/C compressor and every big and little part pertaining to it or surrounding it. The final bill: $1,800. What I paid: $0.

Happy Fathers Day Part 3

Let's not forget about uncles!