The Month of Love

February is always such a wonderful month because January is finally over (it always seems to last so long after the letdown of the holidays) and because we celebrate Valentine's Day and Mom and Dad's birthdays and Scott's birthday and all the while, Maddy is counting town to her birthday!

Maddy made a wonderful Valentine's Day box to take to school and I'm glad that she is at an age where she can come up with concept and execute it all by herself. I just have to drive her to the dollar store for the supplies. Her creation came out almost exactly like the drawing she made.

Scott made sous vide steaks and Maddy decorated a beautiful table.

Maddy and I joined grandma and grandpa and Katie's family to see Ally perform in Cinderella at her Jr. High School and then the next night to see Holly perform in Mamma Mia. They both did a terrific job.

Holly's show was with the West Jordan Regional Youth group and she played Sophie and had several solos and quite the big part. She really is a very accomplished actress. They got to perform in the Black Box theater at Eccles downtown and they did a wonderful job.

Also in February Maddy had a pre-recital and Federation. She started piano lessons with Tori Dimond back in October and this was her first recital. Scott and I came to cheer her on at the recital. Tori does half of the students in one group and then the other half. Still there were about 20 students that performed songs at varying levels. Maddy had to play one choice piece and one from the Federation required list. She did a very good job and I'm impressed with how well she plays considering I am terrible at making her practice. She must be learning them at her lessons.

This recital gives them the chance to play on the big Steinway, to perform in front of groups of people and some strangers, and to practice introducing themselves and their songs.

 Gosh she is looking grown up these days!

Ruby Marshall takes lessons also from Tori and so we made sure that they performed in the same group so they could cheer each other on.

At the very end of the month, Maddy performed in Federation. We never competed in this when I was learning piano but it is a lot like Solo and Ensemble, which I competed in when we were in Madrigals in high school.

Federation is technically not a competition because it's all individual judging not against anyone else. National Federation of Music Clubs is a non-profit that promotes American Music and is for piano and strings and vocal singing festivals as well. The kids are judged and get a score for their performance:

• Superior = 5 points
• Excellent = 4 points
• Satisfactory = 3 points
• Fair = 2 points
• Needs Improvement = 1 point

Maddy was in a group session at Daynes Music and got to play on a beautiful Steinway. None of Tori's other students were in her group so she played in front of all strangers besides me. She was all angry and sullen and complaining about having to perform in front of judges. I kept saying it's okay to be nervous but she always said "I'm not nervous, I just hate having to perform in front of judges!" She did perform and did a wonderful job and afterwards returned to her seat and promptly broke into tears. I think that she actually was terribly nervous and all that came out in tears afterwards. A nice man there to see one of his kids came up to her afterwards and said "you did such a wonderful job young lady". I think that he saw her upset and wanted to lift her up. It was a truly kind thing to pay her a compliment and try to boost her spirits. I think it helped a little bit when Maddy got her score sheet and she got a "Superior" rating. I tried to talk a lot about how wonderful it was and how great she did to maybe make that achievement overpower the nerves . . . not sure if it landed or not.

So, I bought her spaghetti in the trolley as a reward and that made her happy.

In other news, Scott has been working hard on the basement tearing down walls and building new ones with better insulation and straighter lines. We replaced our heater and air conditioner and ran new ductwork including adding a new heat vent and air return for our bedroom (makes a huge difference!).

Scott's birthday came and went as well and Maddy helped Aunt Amy to decorate the elephant birthday cake grandma baked.

January Happenings

 January is always an interesting month. It is often gloomy with inversion but, lately, little snow so it just looks dead and brown. At the same time, it's the month that we clean up from Christmas and the other holidays of the fall and try to organize and get things back on a normal track. Most of all, it seems to last forever. Interestingly enough, while it seems to last forever I'm not sure it was that eventful of a month. Though there were a few notable things that happened.

First up, Maddy went ice skating one weekend with her neighbor friend Brie and after having a really wonderful day, right at the end of the afternoon I got a call that she had fallen and really hurt her wrist. There was no real reason to suspect that it was broken (no bones poking out or terrible swelling or bruising) but I'm a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to Maddy so I took her to the Instacare to have them check her out.
They took an x-ray of her wrist and in the end determined that it was a good sprain and so they sent her home with a wrist brace and instructions to take Ibuprophen to keep swelling and pain at bay. She ended up wearing her brace for most of the month as it was still tender even after several weeks but in the end, she healed up nicely.

While I took Maddy to the Instacare, Scott went on our group date with several of the couples from our ward.

It was a fun night particularly becuase he took first place in the GoKart races, which makes any man happy. We have been so blessed to have such great couples in our ward that have been friendly and wonderful to us and they are hilarious and so fun to hang out with.

Scott, Matthew Rachel and Phil Sanderson, Anna Cole and brother Jeremiah, Tiburon and Adam Erickson

In other wonderful news, Scott  started working in the basement again. He pulled down all the old sheetrock, insulation, framing and wires so he could start with a clean slate.

In the corner near the fireplace he also knocked down the old brick that continued all the way to the wall creating a weird little space that was unusable. I love to see progress down here. Maddy has been having more and more late nights and sleep overs and friends wanting to play Beat Saber in the front room on the playstation which means that Scott and I end up hiding out in our room to get away from the kiddos. I'm thinking that maybe this is making our house feel tremendously small to Scott and so he is now feeling a yearning for the extra space like I always do so it's spurring him on. It will be so great to have this space done so when Maddy wants to play with friends we can either send them down to the basement, or go down ourselves to hide out. It's going to be wonderful.

Also in January, Sarah and I drove down south to pick up Julianne and we all went to see Bernadette Peters in conert at UVU. Wow she is fantastic. She's like 70 years old and she is gorgeous and so amazingly talented. I enjoyed every minute of it. We've lover Bernadette Peters since we were kids growing up watching her as the witch in "Into the Woods" and seeing her in "Annie" as Roosters ditzy wife. When Scott and Maddy and I went to New York City for the first time we got to see a revival of "Hello Dolly" and she was playing Dolly Levi. I was so, so excited to see her in real life on Broadway and when she came on stage and the theater erupted into clapping I cried! Silly but it was a special moment. Anyway, she's amazing and it was a fantastic show.

I had a few pictures from my latest trip to Fantasic Sams. Maddy always makes fun of me when I go because I get my eyebrows waxed and tinted and she likes to call them "angry eyebrows". Scott hates it because they are so strong for several days, particularly when I've washed my face and have no other make-up on to balance them out.

Last big event was Rachel and Spencer getting their new house!! It's a beautiful home in West Jordan and to save money, they asked family to come over and help paint a few rooms and hang some nicer than builders grade mirrors and light fixtures. On the Saturday after they got keys to the house Sarah, Katie and Dad and I went over and we painted the boy bedrooms. Rachel had also planned to have us paint her bedroom and the front room but when the moved in they enjoyed the crisp white so much they decided against it. Good thing since we barely got the two rooms done before it got too dark to do any more.

Dad and I did the cutting in around the ceiling and windows and doors. Katie is a master at taping perfectly and Sarah and Rachel rolled paint on the walls. Spencer was running other errands and Lilian and Maddy were watching the boys at grandma's house. It was a whole family effort.

The next Monday was Martin Luther King day and Maddy had no school so I took the day off and dad and I went back to help hang light fixtures. We did new lights in both boys' rooms and a fan in each the master and the family room. Those was all fairly straight forward and I got to do a lot of the wiring so I feel pretty confident about that now. I'm all set to do all the work at my house once we need to do it in the basement!

The hardest job was hanging the three pendant lights over the kitchen island because they all had to be even with each other. The cords that they hang from are flexible which also made it difficult but in the end we got them up and looking good. Too bad I don't have a picture of the final product here. We had planned to hang some mirrors too but in the end, we didn't have the tools we needed to do a good job so planned to come back the next weekend.

Unfortunately, the next day throughout the work day I started feeling terribly achy and cold and realized at the end of the day that surely I must have a fever. Sure enough I did and by the middle of the night it was up to 102F. I was a bit worried as I was supposed to get on a plane the next Sunday for a work trip so I was quite anxious about whether I'd be able to. I called the teledoctor the next morning as I thought I had influenza. He said that normally it lasted 3-7 days and that since I had had a flu shot it should be milder than some. He got me started on the anti-viral medicine Tamiflu that should also help to shorten by a day or so but said that his guess? I wouldn't be feeling good enough to fly out on Sunday.

So for the next four days I let my medicine wear off so I could see if I still have a temperature which would indicate that I was contagious and not able to fly anywhere. Only bad thing about that was every time it would wear off I would get freezing cold and so achy and miserable and the only thing that could make it better was baths. And then after a bath and while the meds were working, I was terribly hot and sweaty and clammy. Just couldn't win. By about Thursday I started coughing and by Saturday, with the fever still raging and the coughing getting back and my breathing making a crackle sound, I decided to go to the Instacare worried that the flu had turned into pneumonia.

After listening to my symptoms and how they developed, noting my clammy skin and listening to my cough and my lungs, they sent me for a chest x-ray and confirmed that I did have pneumonia. In fact, they figured that I never had influenza at all and that it was pneumonia all along.

Clearly I was not going to make my flight to Dubai the next day as I still had a fever and was contagious but I hoped that maybe I could join the group for the second half of the trip in Israel in a week. The doctor put me on double antibiotics and a cough medicine. They told me the fever should be gone by Tuesday, my energy should return by about Saturday and that my coughing would likely last a month. Sunday I stayed home from church and worked on canceling the Dubai half of my trip - hotels, flights, etc. I wrote emails to my contacts in Dubai and told that I wouldn't make it but Jackie and the team would come anyway. I read through the answers to the questions I had sent before hand and sent emails to the team with all the follow up questions I had so they could get what I needed.

When I called Delta to move my SLC to Dubai leg to be a SLC to Israel instead, they informed me that it would be a $300 change fee but also an increase in the fare by $1100. This in addition to the original fare of $1200! With that extra cost, and knowing that pneumonia is a bit more worrisome of an illness, worried that jet lag and travel exhaustion would not do my body any good in getting better, and also knowing that nobody would want to sit next to me on a plane while I coughed and coughed (particularly because of the coronovirus issues*), I decided just to cancel the trip altogether. That meant more hotels to cancel and more emails to accountants and instructions on follow up questions. That said, it was such a relief to not stress about this trip.

It's now three weeks since I started and I do still have a cough but it's not too bad as long as I'm just sitting or laying down. No waking up in the night, I just get bad when my heart rate gets up as I'm more active. So I take it easy and all is good. Scott and Maddy stayed well and I'm so grateful for that. When I get a really bad coughing fit Maddy says "mommy don't die". She says it a lot. She's mostly kidding but it does make me feel loved.



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*there is a terrible virus called coronovirus spreading around from China. thousands and thousands of people are infected and hundreds have died. A cruise ship that has had many cases on it has been quarantined near Japan and the US government sent in a chartered plane to China to bring home citizens and quarantined them at an air force base in San Diego for two weeks to clear them of illness before they are allowed to go home. It's quite sad.

Wendy Archibald's funeral

About a month ago, I was trying to do an Instagram post where I put an emoji for each year of the last 10 to signify what was going on in our lives. It was a fun exercise which included going back to my blog books to see what was going on. I read a bunch of posts to Maddy about her birth and about when she was little and the funny things she used to do. In the end, it made me kind of long for a place where I could write down my thoughts and feelings and stories so I wouldn't forget them. So, since we are at the beginning of a year, I thought maybe I should start it up again. No point in trying to catch up on anything old, but just see about moving forward maybe.

And with that in mind, a recap of January 2020, the beginning of a new decade.

January essentially started with the funeral of Wendy Archibald on Saturday 4 January. Wendy is the wife of Lyle Archibald, our dear friend and director of Odyssey Chorale.

I first met her on the choir tour we took with Odyssey to Italy in May 2007.

While I didn't have the chance to really get to know her well on this trip, I do remember being clearly impressed with her kindness and friendliness and wowed by her amazing smile. She came in as the companion of Lyle and jumped right in and took care of us all like family.

In June of 2014 Odyssey Chorale went on another tour, this time to Budapest, Vienna and Prague. This time Wendy and her daughets Mackenzie and Madison all joined the choir so we knew them better thanks to months of rehearsals.

Some time after our trip, Wendy sent me a message on facebook, out of the blue, that just showed me what a gracious and wonderful woman she was.


She said "Melissa Dalton Bishop -- you are a class act and I love you...not just your beautiful voice but your entire person. I appreciate your note to McK. Throughout our trip, I observed you just being fantastic. Funny, normal, NOT fussy...just a joy. Almost no one knew that my Dad's funeral was 2 days before we left so I suppose I was extra introspective. People like you just make life better wherever you go..."

It was so meaningful to me that she would take the time to write to me and I made a note to try to be more like her and maybe someday do something similar - just compliment someone out of the blue.

Well, in August we heard on Facebook that she had a cancerous brain tumor. She was having surgery and was hoping to be able to remove the tumor and recover. However, it didn't go as planned and after her successful tumor removal, Wendy never recovered her ability to walk or speak and eventually, cancer took her life in December leaving a beautiful, darling family behind.

Lyle reached out to me and Sarah and Katie and asked if we would sing with a choir of his former choir members at the funeral. Katie was unable to go but Sarah and I joined with Sally and Georgia and about 100 other people to sing "Alleluia" arranged by Mac Wilberg. With about an hour before the funeral to rehearse with Roslyn Hall, we did a lovely job I feel, in singing for Lyle and Wendy and Kenzie and Missy in singing their mom to Heaven. It was such a lovely service and the speakers, including Madison, did such a tremendous job in making me wish that I had known Wendy more. She was an amazing woman who made time for everyone around her and touched so many lives between choir people, and her students at BYU Law where she was Dean of Students.

I always say I love funerals. While they are tearful and sad, there is also such a celebration of the goodness in people and I always leave wanting so desperately to be a better person. This was no exception and it was an honor to be able to join my voice with others to thank Lyle for his many, many years of service and teaching and also to thank Wendy for her gracious influence on me.

December means Christmas

It's December and that means CHRISTMAS TIME!!!!!

 Maddy got her ears pierced. Again. She got them pierced once before but when she wore a cheap pair of earrings and they got infected, she decided to let them grow in. I was at choir that night and when I got home and she didn't have earrings in, I told her we should just put the studs back in and start over. But she couldn't stand the thought of the pain with one more insertion of earrings and so they grew in. After some time it was decided that she was now ready to be more responsible, and I was ready to put my foot down with regard to veto on cheap (while cute) earrings and we tried again. So far so good.

We joined our ward for a Christmas activity where the Taylorsville High School Madrigals performed and I loved every minute. It was such a treat to reminice to that time when I was going around to ward partys to perform, and fun to hear them sing many of the same songs that I had sung so many years ago in madrigals. As always, the best part is actually meeting Santa and then posing for pictures with friends on the stage.

Ruby Marshall, Lily Knudsen and Maddy

 

 

As pre usual, Maddy's school put on a Christmas program. Each grade has a scheduled time so the moms and dads and grandparents rotate in and out with the kids. It's a fun tradition and a bit of a mad house. Such cute kids.

This girl. I can't get over how silly she is. I guess it's good that we have a secret agent in the family to make sure we are safe from bandits.

Christmas isn't Christmas without a couple of Sally Bytheway Concerts. The men this season sang "Run Run Reindeer" and had hats and sunglasses as props. They get all the fun numbers and we women sing either something lovely or something suited for the women's chorus at the high school so it's silly stuff. Don't get me wrong, sometimes those are fun to sing, but the boys get all the really great numbers!

Barbara Beckstrom with mom and dad and Katie

"You Shall Not Pass"

Ran into Santa in the parking lot at Harmons. Had to take a picture to show Maddy.

 

This time of year in my work world means lots of continuing professional education credits (CPE) so I can keep my CPA license current. The best part of that is it tends to be a XANGO reunion at the UACPA winter conference. It amazes me how many wonderful friends I have made over the years in this job. Everyone is now at different places but we always catch up at least once a year at training. (Left to right Jason Pierce, Cassie Jensen, Travis Ogden, Reggie Rappleye, Andy Nelson, Me, Ben Davidson, and Spencer Seaquist)

December also means the XANGO Christmas party. This year we rented out a theater and invited our spouses to come see the new installation of the Star Wars Saga on opening day. It was a great movie with popcorn and drinks and prizes and dress ups... my Princess Leia buns were on point!

With our owner Gordon Morton

Me, Yoko Little, and Brian and Leslie Gallacher

Pretty, Pretty clouds

Some of my favorite men from choir are Larry Duncan, who I used to stand by season after season, and daddy who I got to stand by for the first time this season. It is such fun to stand mixed up so that we get to hear all the different parts blended together.

Fun also is cousins Liz Birnel and Joy Laudie who sing and play violin, respectively, with SBC. With mom, dad, Katie, Sarah, Uncle Craig and these two, we have quite the family attendance at each concert.

We picked out a paint color and got paint on the walls! Scott put beadboard on the ceiling and I love the way it looks! This is going to be a great looking bathroom.

We had tickets to see the Mormorn Tabernacle Choir concert this year with special guest Laura Osnes. She performs on Broadway most recently in the revival of Rogers and Hammersteins "Cinderella" as well as "Bonnie and Clyde" She was wonderful! I love her voice and she is just so pretty to look at. It was the first time I've been to the Christmas concert despite trying to get tickets many years in the lottery. It was a fun way to end the evening, which actually started with a choir performance at the Assembly Hall.

It's wonderful to have family that enjoys music and that we see each concert. I love that Uncle Craig has a venue to show off his mighty clarinet talents and pleased as punch when he gets solos (that he rocks) and everyone is so impressed with his skills.

Once a year we also get together as "Ladies Who Lunch" and have a Christmas Sweater lunch and gift exchanges. This year Georgia couldn't join us but we were delighted to find that she wore her sweater anyway and sent us a picture. These ladies are just the best.

Maddy and Ruby and I had to make sugar cookies. Mom's tried and true recipe with no frosting but sprinkles instead are my very favorite. It's always more fun with a friend to. Also, I hate to bake, but this tradition is worth it anyway.

Christmas Eve was spent at mom and dad's house in Payson. Cody, Hayley and Harper as well as Uncle Dennis and Tempy and Ben and family were there. We read Christmas books and played Christmas "Taboo" and had a nice evening wasting away the hours before Santa could come.

Christmas Eve comes with new pajamas for everyone. We've had this tradition since I was a kid and I remember those years when mom used to make them herself. Over time she realized that it was worth the money to purchase 5 pairs of pajamas versus making them. I just decided that she must be right and skipped over the making stage right to the buying. Scott always gets new jammies to but won't pose with us.

Christmas day was a flurry of presents (I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of opening presents!) and then we took Maddy the neighbor, Emma, out for rides in the snow. Scott drove the 4-wheeler and I sat on the back and watched over the kids, sometimes hauling them this way or that to ensure they were on snow and not the road. The best snow we found was actually in the back yard.

Harper was the best the whole day - well, Harper and the box.

We came home to lovely snow in the yard, a very pretty, welcoming house, and in the coming days
gathered with the Daltons for a party and gift exchange. Rachel, as unfortunately usual, had to join us via FaceTime. What did people do without FaceTime?

Tile down in the bathroom... :)

We headed back to Payson on New Year's Eve by way of Scheel's because Melinda and Marcus and kiddos were in town as well as Jeff and Channy and the best person - cousin Khloe! I love watching Scott with his siblings. It's fun to see them interact with each other.



"Cold Bellies on the Window" or "Flashing". It's awfully close

And we'll leave you with a few more pictures from the concert. Linda took the first while we were practicing before the concert. Clearly we were practicing "Hark the Herald Angel's Sing" but we had to work our air chimes. What a wonderful song by Dan Forrest and horribly difficult, wonderful bells to play. Turned out to be one of my favorites, once I learned to sing and chime.