Mother of Mine

When I was younger, people often told me that I looked like my dad. Obviously my dad is handsome and stuff, but now that I am older and people have started telling me I look more like my mom, I am quite happy about it. She is pretty. And a girl. And if I remind people of her in any way, I am flattered :)

One time when I was little, I remember staying home from school because I was sick. Or "sick" maybe? Anyway, my mom brought me a pink tray with coloring books and crayons and a plate of eggs, and I just sat there being "sick" and taken care of. I think that's why now, I love taking care of people when they're sick! And not to brag, but I think I'm pretty good at it. 

Every year, my mom likes to take us to Larriland Farms to pick strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and whatever else is in season and sounds good. We will make jams, syrups, and anything else with those jams, and it is always so yummy. 

My mom is nice because she's my mom and my friend. I remember the day after I got my first boyfriend, and I txted my mom all excited. She called me right after I sent that txt. I love thinking about that conversation because she was so excited for me and we just talked like she was one of my friends my own age. 

When I was in Florida, my family drove down to visit and left the Sabie car with me for the rest of my college program. When my program ended, my mom and Julie flew down and drove back to Maryland with me. We had a great time because my mom is such a fun travel companion! We could have just driven straight from Florida to Maryland, but instead, we stopped by a plantation and went to St. Augustine's on our way home. 

She let me drive super-fast, and just appreciated it. She engaged us in fun conversations. We logged our trip in a little notebook. We introduced her to music that we liked. 

My mom is a great mom. She loves being a mom! I love that she loves her job. I never ever feel like she would rather be anything else than my mom. I have grown up believing that the job of a mother is the best job there is, because my mom believes it. 

She is a mother to seven of her own kids, but she is also an honorary mother to many people. This picture is us with our honorary brothers: the Pest Control Boys of 2009. Kelly and I met them in our singles ward when we were home for the summer, and had them over for dinner almost every Sunday until they left. They loved our family and especially our parents. I love how my mom welcomed them and cheerfully fed them. She is an example to me of great generosity and hospitality, because boys can eat a LOT.

Birthdays are special to my mom! Every year, she cuts out signs like the one above for our birthdays. When I was at college, she sent me my own letters so I could carry on the tradition. Besides this tradition, we like to go around the table and give everyone the chance to say what they love about the birthday girl or boy. My mom comes close to crying every birthday :) We also read what my mom wrote about our birth, and it is so beautiful and nice. 

My mom always wants to improve at something. I don't know where her number is.....maybe she didn't participate in a race in this picture? But whatever. The point is, she runs. She used to walk every morning, but she's gradually built up to jogging and running. She is always setting goals for herself, which inspires me, because she is never just stagnant. She works on earning her Young Women's medallion, and when she finishes, she starts over. She reminds me that no matter how good you are, you can always get better at something. 

My mom is cute with my dad. They are so cute I want to die. One time, I was driving with my mom and "Falling for You" by Colbie Caillat came on the radio. She called my dad and the following conversation happened:

Dad: Hello?

Mom: Hi Sid! I'm just driving with Heather, and there's this cute song on the radio, and I think I'm Falling for you!......Hello? Sid?

Dad: I gotta go. *Hangs up*

Mom: (all sad) I think he just hung up on me....

Later, my dad called back and explained that he had been on a business call and just quickly answered my mom's phone call, but then got flustered and didn't want to say anything romantic so that his business buddies could hear, so he just said he had to go. I still make fun of him to this day about that. 

My mom makes me feel like I am great at anything I do! She always encourages and supports me, whether I am trying to learn a song on the piano, about to go take a test, working on becoming a teacher, or trying out a new hairdo. She asks me for advice. I even gave her a few piano lessons! She was such a great pupil :)

Before I went back to college for my second semester, we had a great photo shoot in the BWI airport. Also, my mom said that she was sad that we were going back to college, but she was also happy, because she knows that it is a good thing. 

My mom had a GREAT time at college. Ah de boys loved her and tried to take her on dates and stuff. 

But she only looks at one boy like this!

My mom is a good daughter. She loves and respects both of her parents, and they always say she was the perfect child. Which must be why she got 7 perfect children :) Karma can be a good thing sometimes....

One time, I was in the kitchen doing homework or cleaning or eating or something, and my mom was in the next room over, reading a book to Sarah. The book she was reading was called "Oliver Pig at School" by Jean Van Leeuwen. It is about a pig named Oliver and his first day of school. He worries about normal things, like who will be his friend, if his teacher will be nice, and how he will get on the right bus to go back home.

I heard my mom reading in the background and didn't pay too close attention. Then I heard her voice start to quaver a little. Then it rose in pitch. 

"What if no one talked to him on the bus?" she squeaked. "What if no one talked to him all day?"

We make fun of her for it, but secretly, I realize that I am turning into my mom. You know why? Because the other day, I read the 5 classroom rules that my 2nd grade team came up with, and I started crying a little. Because they were so darn cute. 

And you know what, I am fine with turning into my mom. She is a darn decent lady, and I love her :)

Happy Mother's Day! Thanks for birthing me!

Goodbye summer??

In 5 days, I will be leaving Maryland to go back to Utah. I amm really excited....I love Utah, and I love school....but I am also starting to get kind of sad about leaving! It looks like this weekend will be another bittersweet time.

This whole week has been totally crazy as we try to cram everything into the last two weeks of the summer that we kept putting off earlier. On Saturday, we had a sister day at Six Flags. This was an absolutely necessary trip because Six Flags is going bankrupt and so clearly we had to go! We left at about 10:30 and rode all the rides that we wanted to right away, which was such a good decision, because after lunch at Johnny Rockets it started raining. At first it wasn't so bad, when we were on the octopus ride, but then it just started pouringg. We were soaking wet so we decided to just get a funnel cake and call it a day. I was pretty much ready to go home anyway, but the rain just reiterated this.

Today Caitlin, Kelly, Jenn and I all went to single's ward for the last time this summer. That ward has really been good for us this year. I've always learned a lot from the lessons and I've gotten to meet a lot of really cool people. A lot of them are going to BYU so that will be fun to know some random people there.

Then Holly and I had a piano recital for our students at my house. This summer I just taught my brothers, sisters, mom, and the 7-yr-old neighbor boy across the street (who is literally a child genius and so cute) and Holly had two students who were there. So right when we got home from church, Kelly and I had to get the house ready and prepare some refreshments. It was a very good recital which started out with my Uncle Jacob and Aunt Devon knocking on the door unexpectedly during my introduction and welcome. I don't think anyone minded but it was still pretty funny timing. All of the students did a very nice job but I don't know if anyone did their whole song without a single mistake. I remember when I took lessons, instead of just teaching them, and I would get sooo nervous before recitals. I only remember one recital that I did my whole song perfectly and other than that I made at least one mistake every time.

At this recital, probably the award for Most Memorable Performance would have to go to Jacob. Apparently he missed the memo that recitals are a little more fancy than your everyday pickup baseball game, and he performed in shorts and a t-shirt. I guess he also missed the memo that both my mom and I told him to change. Either way, he decided at the last minute that he wanted to sing his song while he played. It was a lovely demonstration of all his musical abilities. Both Jacob and I had to have tubes put in our ears when we were younger so that we could hear better, but I think the tubes worked better for me, because Jacob is still a little bit tone-deaf. He sings songs very deliberately, sticking loyally to one note the whole time. Hearing him sing and play was certainly an experience. He is turning out to be quite the class clown!

My mom was the last performer. She took lessons for a short time as a little girl but other than that, she just started this summer. I was a little nervous about teaching her...I mean, she's my mom....but she was suchh a good student. She listened to every every everything I said and practiced really diligently every week. It was really cute I thought :)

Anyway this was her first recital and I know she was so nervous for it. Sometimes at her lessons she will mess up and get flustered and explain to me that she's usually so much better at this song, and that's just with me there. So considering this, and the fact that I remember feeling nervous before my own recitals, I was feeling some sympathy anxiety as she sat down, about to play. Joseph has swine flu (.......yeah. i know! Kinddd of ridiculous. We are all very irreverent about it. We call him pig, pigman, and piglet every time we address him and oink at him whenever possible. We've also started referring to his room as the pigsty. A few nights ago at scripture study, he read a scripture that said, "I say unto you, Nay," and I whispered to Julie, "Did he just say nay? I thought he was a pig!" She replied, "Oh, he's just confused." We thumbed up our noses at him and oinked appropriately, reminding him of his true biological identity.) The reason this all is relevant is because Joseph performed right before Mom, and she insisted that he disinfect the piano keys before she played. So we had a brief intermission while he wiped them down and she introduced her song.

There's something about being a piano teacher at a recital for your students that makes you feel a little like a lifeguard tied to their chair. During lessons, you can jump in and save your student if they make a mistake. During a recital, you just have to sit back and let them fend for themselves. If they make a mistake, you just have to send them telepathic encouragement to take a deep breath and pick up wherever they feel comfortable.

My mom sat down and lifted her hands to the keys. She went through the first few measures beautifully, fumbled a little, and stopped. "I'm going to start over," she said, smiling. Everyone smiled back. I noticed her hands shaking a little and I quickly remembered being a student about to perform and being absolutely positive I would mess up and completely embarrass myself. Going through her song the second time, my mom made a few more mistakes and I know she wasn't very happy with her performance. That made me sad because I know how hard she has worked and I know how well she is able to play that song. As a piano teacher, you see all the little struggles a student has with their songs. You learn how their mind works as they correct their mistakes and you being to root for them when they get to a part of a song that has always been tricky for them. My mom stopped having piano lessons as a little girl because her first teacher was old and smelled bad and she just didn't want to deal with that. Now, years later, here she was, coming back and wanting to learn something, wanting to improve herself. I admire that so much. Even if she can't be proud of this particular recital, I want her to be proud of how she picked something for herself to work on and then really did work on it. I know it must have taken a lot of courage for her to go up in front of her children, the most important people in her life, and her peers, and perform in a situation where it was possible that she would make mistakes.

After this final performance, which actually was quite good, Holly and I each said a few words about how much we enjoyed teaching, etc., and then we invited everyone to the kitchen for refreshments. At each recital I like to give my students a Symphony chocolate bar and this time as I was passing them out, I discovered that I had one extra. I stood there holding it for a minute, trying to figure out why I had gotten one extra, and then I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to include Julie in the program! She had a song and everything and I just completely forgot to put her on the program, so she never got a chance to perform it! So I felt a little bad about that but she didn't seem too concerned. People milled around, snacking on the refreshments, and then when everyone had left, we had dinner with Charlene.

Charlene babysat us when we were younger and we can all very clearly remember laying with our butts to the wall, flailing our legs and arms and singing at the top of our lungs, "Charlene the famous babysitter, whoo!" No one knows how this got started but we loved when she came to babysat and enthusiastically advertised her to all of our friends. At any rate, she was kindly able to overlook our childhood devilishness and come over for dinner and is always sweet and fun when we see her now.

After dinner we moved into the living room again to give Julie a chance to perform her recital piece. She did a lovely job and then we were paid a visit by Ecoli Imishi (pronounced Ee-cull-ee Ee-mee-she).

This is where my family gets weird again.

Ecoli Imishi is Nicole's alter-ego opera singer. Nicole likes to read Nancy Drew mysteries to my mom when they are driving in the car together and one day while they were reading, Ecoli Imishi was born. Nicole decided to announce the Nancy Drew Story Hour with a song by her and she's been a frequent visitor in our home ever since (when she is not otherwise detained by world tours, etc.). Ecoli Imishi is best known for her shrillness of voice but the shortness of her temper is also legendary.

Needless to say, we were delighted to have such an esteemed guest in our midst (once again).

Following her performance, the rest of the family felt that this would be an appropriate time to reveal their alter-egos as well. Sarah made an appearance as the famous salsa dancer, Senora Sali. After she burned up the dance floor with her never-before-seen tricks, Delia and Edeline graced us with an impressive rendition of the long-lost vocals to Tchaikovsky. At this point the small extension on the recital that everyone had been expecting was just spiraling out of control and taking on a new form as an impromptu circus. I was glad when no more unexpected special guests showed up and we could all go our separate ways.

On a completely different note, I recently realized that I go to great lengths to protect myself from feeling sad. I try not to put myself in situations that will make me sad. I avoid them at whatever cost. A few nights ago I went over to Caitlin's for a movie and she wanted to watched P.S. I Love You. I have only ever seen previews for this movie and I know it would make me cry. I know it. I picked Win a Date with Tad Hamilton instead but the whole thing made me think. I am so afraid of feeling sad that I wonder if I miss out on a lot because of it. Is it just sadness that I am missing out on?

Anyway I realllllyy should be getting to bed. Good night all :)