Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

You may have noticed that I'm not blogging as much as I used to. I really don't want to give up on the blog, but I have been struggling to stay on top of it for the last few months. I have a few explanations why, which I will now offer as a sort of "apology" for being less vigilant in documenting my family's history (which is mainly how I view this blog!).

Some pictures from our ward's Relief Society birthday dinner. Each table had its own theme; ours was "garden party," and the food was all incredibly delicious! As it turned out, this was to be my last Relief Society activity as members of the Sahuarita First Ward (sob! More on that later)

Over the last few months, I've had several changes in my daily routine, and some significant changes in our family's routine as well. All of this has really consumed my time & attention. As the late great David Bowie once sang, "Time may change me, but I can't trace time." I've had a harder time lately sorting my schedule into "church time"/"personal time"/"work time," and I suspect this balance will be ever trickier going forward. Sometimes I am legitimately shocked at how much time has passed, and how little on my "to-do" list has been accomplished. And on the nights when I do get everything on my list checked off, I am usually too tired to attempt anything else. I am getting to be an old, cranky, tired-out lately.

First of all, in January, I started teaching piano lessons in the daytime. I still had a full contingent of ten students a week in the after-school hours (which is already pretty hectic, given my kids' increasingly busy after-school schedules). However, I had been looking for some extra (paid) work during the daytime. Before school started, I'd applied to two different jobs (one at my children's school, and one at the local branch of our county library). While neither of those applications went anywhere, I got a lead from a friend about a family that had just moved into the area and was looking for a new piano teacher. This family had four children, and all of them wanted lessons...and all of them were home-schooled, which meant I could teach them in a two-hour block during the day, when all my kids were out of the house.

There were many pluses to this, obviously. My piano earnings went up significantly (enough so that we have been able to build a new computer and plan a fall family trip to San Diego without taking a significant financial hit). Even better, though, this family was super-nice and eager to learn...my favorite kinds of students! The kids (Alison, Emma, Natalie, and Henry) are a joy to teach and it has been a great few months learning more about them and helping develop their skill. Some of the kids have had several years of lessons prior to this, and so it has been good for me as a piano teacher to learn different teaching methods and songs, so as to flesh out my repertoire. I am grateful for having more "early-intermediate" level students; they really keep me on my toes and help me grow as a teacher.

Look at all these amazing students I have! This is from our spring recital in May. I love all these kids, and I'm lucky to be their teacher. More "serious" pictures will follow in a future blog post.

 Overall, this spring has got me thinking that I could start reaching out to other stay-at-home students (and possibly parents!), and grow my "home-based business" in the near future. I am strongly considering adding another daytime student (or two!) when school resumes this fall. In the next several years, I hope to slooooowly transition from stay-at-home mom to working mom. But in the meantime, teaching piano is a great way to earn money doing something I love, while still being close to my children. The minus of this new arrangement, of course, is that now I have less time during the day to get my "homemaker" errands run, and also less time to crash and do "me stuff." Writing in the blog arguably falls under both those categories. It feels great to earn extra money, but sacrifices have to be made somewhere.

In addition to teaching during the day, I ended up volunteering weekly at two different locations. I was at my kids' school for a couple of hours every Monday morning, and I worked at the Continental School library for a couple of hours every Friday morning. Add the commute time to both those activities, and the time away from home started to add up. I greatly enjoyed both activities, though, and would gladly do them both again in the coming year! But the volunteering does mean that another few hours are subtracted from my weekly "free time."

The other big change in our lives is not so much something our family did, but something that happened to us...the Sahuarita Arizona LDS stake (the regional organization of our church) changed all its ward/congregational boundaries at the end of March (on Easter Sunday, no less!). A new ward (named the "Ranch Ward" was created in our area, and the boundaries of all the other existing wards were shifted around to "condense" them. At the beginning of Easter Sunday, we were part of the Sahuarita First Ward...the ward that had been our happy home for eight years. By the day's end, we (and our small neighborhood, with a handful of LDS families) was now part of the Anamax Ward, which meets in a completely different building and at a completely different time than the First Ward (which was also re-named the Pecan Grove Ward).

Eight years in the First Ward, and suddenly we were no longer part of it. That time frame was the longest Nathan or I had been in a congregation our entire adult lives; in Nathan's case, it was the longest time he'd ever spent in any ward for his entire life. Our kids were tiny when we moved in (Aurora was born after we became part of First Ward), and they had never known any other ward. All our closest friends were on the other side of the dividing line; that meant we would no longer be attending church with them, seeing them weekly and serving alongside them. It was a gutting feeling to realize we were switching wards; Nathan and I were very depressed about it for days! Over two months later, we are still coming to grips with it. Our kids have done a little better adjusting, but not much (the first few Sundays brought tears from my two older girls).

Ward boundary changes happen all the time in the LDS Church; it's a byproduct of a growing, shifting church membership. On a macro level, it is a positive; it's a sign the kingdom of God on the earth is growing and gaining strength. On a micro level, though, it can be difficult when friends and sometimes family are separated and have to adjust to a new group of people. Of course, our friends aren't gone, per se...in fact, this boundary shift has encouraged us to be more proactive friends, and to reach out to our buddies in the Pecan Grove Ward with more regularity. In addition, many of our "old friends" still attend our charter school, which means we'll still be seeing them on a regular basis. At the same time, though, there is a special sort of connection held between members of the same ward, and now that that connection is gone, things have shifted somewhat from the way they were before. Our connection with our friends, while still strong, will never quite be the same.


I hope my new callings will help me figure things out a little better. Funnily enough, I immediately received the same calling I'd had in my previous ward...Activity Days leader! However, I didn't get the calling until a few weeks had gone by; and by that time, the school year was almost done and Activity Days was on "hiatus" while many families went out of town for the summer. In addition, our old ward had a few activities to which we were invited, which we eagerly accepted! It made our transition to the new ward a little more drawn-out. I will begin planning Activity Days in earnest in July; perhaps I can even recycle a few of the ideas I used in my old ward, so I have less planning to do!

As a small digression (and because I'd like to document these activities somewhere), here are a few of the activities I ran for the Activity Day girls over the winter:

 

In late January, we made homemade lotion and lip balm. The lip balm was given to the girls at the end of the activity as a reminder to "use their mouths wisely" and only speak kind words to one another.

One of the moms donated her candy molds for us to pour the lotion into, so we were able to make some adorable little "lotion bars" that the girls really loved.

We used shea butter, beeswax, and coconut oil to form the lotion and the lip balm. We also used essential oils to "flavor" both the lotion and lip balm. I really love the way the peppermint lip balm smells when I apply it! The recipe made a ton, and we still have a lot of stuff left over! Perhaps I will make this again in our new ward? Who knows?

We gave the lotion bars a week or two to set up, then we packaged them neatly at the subsequent Activity Day to deliver them to the girl's mothers in honor of Valentine's Day.  They also added to their gift by decorating cookies and creating "service books" to give to their families. Nothing super fancy, but it was certainly delicious!

 

Late February and early March was spent preparing all our Activity Day girls for a combined activity...a progressive dinner! I was the "mastermind" behind the idea, but there were many, many other parents and Activity Day leaders who modified the idea and made it work. The older girls (the 10-11 year olds) would plan a meal, then serve it to the eight- and nine-year-olds. Each "course" of the meal was to be served at a different house; the younger girls would get the appetizer/salad at the first location, the main dish at the second location, and the dessert at the final location. Since the whole thing was my idea (and because I had two different girls participating), I volunteered our home as one of the dinner locations.

The progressive dinner stretched out over two different Activity Days; on the first activity, the older girls (Lorelai among them) chose the dinner they would serve, then plotted out how it was to be prepared and which houses they would be operating out of. The younger girls (led by myself and my partner McKinzie) received a lesson in proper dinner etiquette and manners, complete with a cut-out dinner set for them to practice on.

The night of the actual dinner (March 9, 2016) was a little hectic but also very rewarding to see. The girls who served dinner out of my home were very professional and eager to do their best. Even better, the younger girls who came acted like perfect ladies the entire time; they were calm, polite, and respectful to everyone. My group of girls (I was in charge of the nine-year-olds at the time) were a pretty wild bunch; I was so happy and relieved to see them behave with such maturity!

The dinner prepared by the girls was breadsticks, salad, and spaghetti & meatballs, with brownies for dessert. Yum.

Overall, the dinner worked out splendidly, and everyone involved had many good things to say about it. I was a little stressed out putting it all together, but so happy at the way everything worked out. Maybe I will be inspired to do an activity similar to this in the Anamax Ward, if everyone is game; it would be a lot of fun! In fact, maybe I can do several of these activities again; after all, no one in this ward will remember them! Hooray for taking shortcuts!

However, Activity Days isn't my only responsibility in this new ward. I got a second calling not long after the first; I am now the Primary pianist in the ward. Getting this calling made me very happy; it is my all-time favorite calling. It is so easy; I basically show up and play every Sunday, with virtually no preparation! It is a good way for me to start figuring out which families are what in the ward; for some reason, it has always been easier for me to figure out who people are through their kids. I hope that doesn't make me sound like a creepy person, but there it is. Basically, I get all the fun of being in Primary on Sundays, with not much responsibility. Yay!

It has been harder for Nathan to adjust to the new ward, for a few reasons. There are several ladies and families I knew from before joining this ward (meeting them through my book club or other community/church activities). I don't consider them close, personal friends (yet), but at least we have a shared history and some familiarity. There are also a few families in this ward who also send their kids to Great Expectations Academy, the charter school my kids attend. Nathan knows almost none of the Anamax Ward members, except for a few of the ward's teenagers due to his calling as a seminary teacher. Being a seminary teacher is a good way to get to know a lot of diverse people in the stake; however, because it is a stake calling, he cannot also hold a ward calling, which will slow down his efforts to get acquainted with people in our new ward.

Slowly but surely, we are starting to figure out our place in this new group. There are some challenges here we need to get accustomed to. There are a lot of large families in our new ward who home-school their children, so there is a good chance that most of the socializing my girls do with these kids will be in church settings only. And the ward also has a few large extended families making up a large portion of its population (one huge clan, the Thompsons, consists of the mother & father, plus almost all their children, all of whom live in the ward...and all those children are married, with large families of their own! It is very confusing to keep track of; I'm not sure if I will ever figure them all out). It can feel a little intimidating to be a newcomer in a ward where there are so many tight-knit groups, either related by blood or marriage, or simply by living and serving for many, many years together. We've lived in the area for eight years, but there are a large number of families who've lived in Sahuarita for most of their lives. We are suddenly the "newcomers" again in multiple senses of the word!

Nathan reminded our family (and his seminary students) that this change has been a good wake-up call for us, in a way. We had gotten accustomed to our environment, and were perhaps becoming complacent in our relationships with others. We have had to put forth more effort to keep in touch with our old friends in our old ward, but this makes us more social, engaged people. In addition, we hope to slowly gain a new "network" of acquaintances and friends that can teach us new things (we hope!), and whom we may be meant to serve in ways we can't yet comprehend. We have had to be patient and trust that the Lord has a plan for us here, and we may not learn what it is just yet. However, even though we have had a "physical" change in our church meeting time, our feelings for the gospel of Jesus Christ have not changed. They are still strong and sure, and we hope to continue to develop them as the years go by. We hope and pray our children will still grow in the gospel and look forward to learning and growing in this new ward. And we still plan on keeping the commandments we've been taught and the covenants we've made, striving to be better family members, citizens, and children of God.

Such lofty goals! All this deep thinking and worrying, as you can probably see, has left my thoughts more distracted and turned elsewhere in recent months. I hope and pray the blog will continue to get regular "love and care," but please dear reader...bear with me. As you can see, these changes have mixed us all up a bit, and we are still trying to find our balance. With luck, updates will continue. But if the regularity of my blog posts dips, know that we have good reasons to stay away. I'm trying to keep the home & family running smoothly; and if that means shortening my regular updates, so be it. I just want to do "enough" of the right thing; wish me luck on prioritizing what the "right thing" is going forward.