When it Rains it Pours!

I just want to say.... even with things being so incredibly busy as they have been the past 6 weeks or so, I can't complain. We are so blessed and lucky to have the lives we have. There. Now onto complaining! (ha ha)

I feel like after this weekend I can finally come up for some air....before the crazy holidays really get going. I can not BELIEVE how much has been going on! I had a little breakdown and cried in my kitchen last week for a few minutes, after I had been looking at the calendar. It seems like just when a bunch of crap I had going on or to-do gets overwith, there is just that much more crap coming right up. YES, CRAP. 

...But really, when I look at all the stuff I've been doing it's good stuff to do. And thankfully I have a husband who is actually available right now, and able to take care of the little one while I have been doing so much extra stuff. 

Some of the stuff we've been up to is....

PIANO STUFF

My job has been out of control since July. And it's my own fault. Yes, I cut back by 6 students over the summer so you'd think it wouldn't be as time consuming....wrong!! Against my better judgment I agreed to have my students participate in a big ensemble concert (which happens to FINALLY be this weekend). I knew knew KNEW that it wasn't going to be very well-organized and last-minute and yet somehow I got convinced that it would be a good thing to participate in. Honestly, it is a GREAT experience for my students and I have, of course, enjoyed my time working with them on it and leading group rehearsals and all that. But, just like I thought, since it was so last-minute the time commitment has been WAY more than I bargained for. From the moment I committed in July I was first crazed with getting pieces for my students, then crazed with assigning them additional pieces to fill in all the pianos (it's a 4-piano concert I'm collaborating with 4 other teachers on), then crazed with getting them to LEARN the pieces before the rehearsals, then, the worst part, 3-hour rehearsals 3 nights a week for 2 weeks, which meant me not only rescheduling a bunch of students but also missing adoption classes, Relief Society, clogging, spending ANY time with my husband, and more. Top that off with the unorganization of it all meaning everything from rehearsal schedule to programs to refreshments has been a big, last-minute crazy decision, and you have the main reason my schedule has been a living h-e-c-k for the past 6 weeks. Grr. Like I said, it will be a rewarding night for everyone at the concert. But I have complained about this thing SO much to Collin I know that if I even mention doing it again he will expressly forbid it!

Besides that, I am the co-chairperson for this huge Sonatina Competition that 400+ kids around the valley participate in, and it's coming up in just a few weeks. I am in charge of a lot of stuff for it this year so that is also something that is taking up my time.

THEN there's Piano Club... this special "club" that the "cool teachers" around here have. They get together once a month to perform for each other and eat. If I was at a place in my life where I could actually practice and use it as a good performance opportunity, it would be great. But I'm just not. I get 2 hours a day to myself during naptime and it's not getting spent at the piano right now. (if I can help it) Anyway, I've been invited multiple times over the past couple of years and never, ever could go due to some conflict. So this time I finally actually committed. Which meant I had to spend time practicing. Which I did... and I played well.....but like I said practicing classical music is super low on my to-do list these days. (UNFORTUNATELY. Miss it like crazy.) Did I mention that Piano Club fell on a day that Collin's team had to do concessions at a football game? Of course. So that complicated things. Collin also got dinged in the face while in the Homecoming Dunk Tank that day and had to get "glue stitches" but that's another story....

In the midst of all this I also was asked to perform at the "Beethoven Group." I know, seriously, how many groups like this can there be?!?! :) They meet every week and someone plays a Beethoven Sonata, and they are working their way through all 32 of them. It's put on by my friend and I like to go....but it's yet another committment. And she asked me to play a couple weeks ago. Just a little intimidating to perform Beethoven for your peers! So that added Beethoven to my list of practicing, which I love but at the same time getting a B. Sonata ready in just one week to perform is no small feat, so there was that.

Also, did I mention that for this big ensemble concert we are doing a teacher number, which I actually had to learn and practice as well? So there was another thing to find time to practice....

The final piano thing I've had eating up my time is that I am playing at the Boise temple open house during one of the VIP sessions later this week. So add on hours' worth of background hymn arrangements and more classical for me to practice! I'm excited to do that though, it will probably be fun. At this point it's just one more thing going on though!


Moving on to other stuff...

RUNNING STUFF

I trained hard and ran my first 10K race last weekend. I am going to save a whole post for that because it was a big deal, but for the past 8 weeks amidst all this craziness I was also running 3 days a week, watching what I ate, NOT drinking soda and not having treats. Which sometimes made me want to kill myself. :)

CAR STUFF

After we had that big yard sale in August we thought "hey, why not try to sell our car too?" And so we did. It was for sale for like 3 weeks I think. Collin asked on the high end for it, we figured we'd start high and then go lower. We actually had a ton of people interested, meaning came to look and all, but no offers. And then we found out it didn't even have a clean title (call us stupid but we had no idea what that meant even though we've had the car for 7 years) so we were really thinking we'd have to drop the price. But just the DAY BEFORE we were going to drop the price, someone came to look at it and offered our entire asking price for it! Yea! It was an awesome surprise. Luckily they waited a week between buying it and coming to get it, so we had 2 cars one more week. 

But that led to another fun thing.... having 1 car. We have quite a few friends who are one-car families so we thought, maybe it is not as big of a deal as we are thinking it would be. BUUT we quickly found out that with both of our schedules it is not something workable for us! Collin was awesome and rode his bike to work every day for the 3 weeks we had just one car... because seriously with all my work stuff and running schedule I happened to need the car pretty much every day. It was ridiculous because normally I wouldn't. The worst thing was evenings.... that was right when I had all those rehearsals at BSU night after night, as well as the occasional other commitment that would come up.... and nights that Collin also had wrestling obligations or otherwise made it pretty interesting. I ended up bumming rides off people way more than I would have liked to, but we really didn't have a choice! 

So we started seriously looking for a new car right when ours sold. Still it was SUCH a stressful process. (I know, total First-World problem) We hadn't been looking at cars at ALL. And once we decided we wanted an SUV we still hadn't even been looking--we didn't even have a clue what was out there. So literally everywhere we would drive we would constantly be pointing out SUVs that looked good and discussing them. And every night we'd each have more to add to our list of possibilities after we saw them. So then time was spent actually doing some test driving and reading up about the features and reviews of them... once we decided we wanted one big enough to have a 3rd row fold-up seat it eliminated a ton, but also there are SO many stinkin' SUV types out there! Seriously! It's ridiculous. It was so stressful to me because I knew that the beginning of Collin's wrestling season is lurking around the corner, just next week the little kid program starts. And then having one car was making things so difficult... including finding ANY time that we were going to test drive together. So Collin started looking to just test-drive by himself. Randomly one afternoon he found an Explorer on craigslist that we had checked out before...but it was out of our price range. (that's another thing.... all this crap just to spend MORE money on gas and a car payment each month!?!? ). They dropped the price so that very night we went to look at it. And.... it was so much nicer than the other ones we had looked at, and we really liked the family that was selling it right away too. So.... 2 days later we bought it. Hallelujah! 

I know that is the stupidest whine-fest about getting a new car but I'm just keeping it real, folks. Don't forget we had Ashlyn to drag around every time we went to look or test drive as well. She got to watch lots of movies in the backseat during all that! So.... this isn't actually our car because I haven't taken any pictures of it but it looks exactly like this. Collin has been driving it, which is fine with me since he drove that piecer Cavalier for the past 5 years and had to ride his bike so much too. It's so fun to drive though. This is my first car with fancy things like leather seats, a sun roof, and that stuff so it's fun. Plus our dog can ride in the back (instead of on my lap) which I LOVE. Ok. Enough about stupid cars, I can't believe I just spent that much time writing about it. Moving on.

KID STUFF

Another thing that ended up being a way bigger commitment than I thought it would be is that I signed up to consign at this huge children's clothing consignment sale they have twice a year here. I have shopped at it for the past couple years (since Ash was born obviously) and finally decided to do a good clean-out of her old clothes and try to sell some. It was pretty time consuming sorting the clothes, then washing them and ironing them, hanging them just-so on hangers, entering the items into the tagging system, printing, cutting, and attaching the tags, taking the items to be inspected, volunteering to work, picking my unsold items up, etc. etc. etc. The good news is that I sold about 70% of my stuff which means I got decent money for my work! And since Ashlyn was in extreme need of winter clothes it helped me break even on getting her so many new clothes and shoes. I worked one shift which means I got to shop before all the non-volunteering consigners and the general public, which was super awesome. I will probably participate again but on a smaller scale. It was a good learning experience!

CHARITY STUFF

I did something I've never done before this year and declined from helping with Take Steps! I just knew I couldn't add it to my plate. But wouldn't you know I ended up doing stuff for them anyway, although not as much as usual. I did procure a few incentive prizes, including Boise Hawks and Bogus Basin passes, which was cool. And then there was just getting some donations and recruiting some buddies to come walk with us... and helping the day of the walk of course. I will post more about that soon too.

AND THEN there's this little one, who I love to spend my days with. Nevertheless, most of the stuff I have been needing to do is stuff that can only be done during naptime or after bedtime. And since my evenings were so booked that meant I had naptime only. Good thing she is taking a 2-3 hour nap every day these days... THANK THE HEAVENS! :)

This picture is her being so proud that she is figuring out how to undress herself in her crib. Parents not so excited about that, especially after the poop-painting/flinging extravaganza she had over the weekend. New preventative measures have been taken, rest assured. ;)

LOVE STUFF

In the midst of all this we traveled to Utah the weekend of our 7th anniversary. It was fun to visit Collin's mom and to go out on our "G" date. We GOLFED at Trafalga along with 50 million other people (seriously SO busy) then ate at the Olive GARDEN. And then because we're lame old married people, we spent an hour walking around some car lots checking out SUVs because this was when we were still looking. It took a few attempts to try to get a good picture and we never really did.

On our REAL anniversary which was the following Monday, I got GREEK pizza from Papa Murphy's  and we had a GOOD time hanging out together that evening.

Oh yeah, and I dyed and chopped my hair. I know I look gross face-wise in this picture because I had just finished my little cry-fest in the kitchen (as previously mentioned) not long before. I don't know what I was thinking taking my picture at that time. Probably just checking another thing off my to-do list. Anyway, the stupidest thing is that right after I took this I dropped the camera and it broke. Like, bad enough that I have to take it in to get fixed. Grr. I am such a freaking moron sometimes. So, this is the only picture I have. It's a crazy makeover but I have been planning to do it for a while and so far it's fun!

Other things I have been doing with my non-existent spare time:

-Planning, planning and planning some more for the ward choir Christmas program

-Cleaning the house

-Freezer cooking (working out great so far!)

-Hosting Bunco at my house (basically means cleaning like a freak for a week beforehand)

-Working on our adoption blog (sneak peek if you want: http://cadoption.blogspot.com)

-Working on the rest of the red tape to get approved for adoption

-Freaking out thinking about adopting (again)

-Attempting to put together Halloween costumes

And that's enough of that!