It was February once

We are happy.  Life is good.

Dallin lost his first tooth.  He is 7 1/2, so I guess my kids are late bloomers like Mark and I both were.  He was nervous about getting it pulled out so I gave him an apple to eat instead.  It was a Sunday morning and Mark was there to witness the event while I was in the shower.  Dallin tried to not bite down on the loose tooth but by mistake bit on his tooth and the trick worked--the tooth came nearly out and it just needed a little tug to get it free.  Anyway, this is the account Dallin told me after I got out of the shower that morning.  Actually, first I was greeted first with this:

My kids are awesome.

We bought a piano a couple of months ago.  This purchase has been long in coming, we had a little money set aside when we purchased our home 3 1/2 years ago and finally had the rest of the money to afford a piano now.  We really haven't been in a big hurry to buy because Mark has a nice, full-size keyboard that we use at home and he takes with him when he plays gigs.  We bought it from Craigslist and fortunately we happen to know an expert piano technician (Mark's dad) who helped us greatly in making this purchase.  I am not ashamed to say we prayed about this purchase.  It was a big purchase for us, and we knew we would probably have it for a long time.  This particular piano we saw listed online and we both liked it, but it was a couple thousand above our price range.  A couple of weeks went by and I was doing laundry and had the feeling that I needed to look on Craigslist to see the piano listings again.  The piano was posted again, at almost half the price.  Before I even called Mark I called his dad.  He happened to be out tuning pianos in Apache Junction where this one was for sale, and happened to have time to spare before he headed to his next appointment.  He called the seller and arranged to stop by right then and check out the piano for us.  With the expert's stamp of approval, we made arrangements to buy the piano and have a mover come pick it up for us before we even saw the piano in person.  Now it is here in our home and fits so perfectly that it looks like we decorated the house around this piano.  The piano reminds me that our Heavenly Father loves us enough to help us even with seemingly small things.

Do you like my decorating?  The artwork is "The Tree of Life" on the higher shelf and "Spy Glasses" on the lower shelf.

The boys have all enjoyed playing it and definitely play more often than they did when we just had a keyboard.  Dallin and Adam are in their second year of the Let's Play Music course and are really enjoying being able to play some simple songs.  Now that we have a piano in the front room they will sit down and play multiple times throughout the day.  Dallin has the dexterity of playing down, and Adam just has an ear for music.  Adam likes to sit down and pluck out songs and figure out how to play them.  Dallin tried to do the same thing and got really frustrated that he couldn't figure that out quite as easily as his brother.

Also in February, Dallin finished off his second season of soccer.  I was quite disappointed this season that the team he ended up on had their practices at a park not very close to home.  But I eventually got over it because we really liked the team and especially the coach and assistant coach.  Dallin has learned a lot and has especially become quite the defensive player.  He often plays as sweeper and does an awesome job keeping the ball away from the goal.  He also does a great job knowing where he needs to be, when to step in and clear the ball out, and when to hang back and stay closer to the goal.  We liked soccer this season so much that we signed up with the same team for the spring season, even though the baby is coming right at the end of the season in May.  

 

Happy February times all round.