To save us from disaster

As you may know, a good portion of my life is spent teaching little ones how to navigate this beast of an instrument.  Which means, a good portion of my life is spent shrieking: "Look at those wrists!"  The problem with little ones is that they are little; the problem with piano benches is that they are low.  And, hence, wrists and elbows and shoulders and hands get all out of whack while those little babies are learning to play.  From week to week, we find ourselves fighting a battle of hand position disaster.

My solution has long been a cushion, to bump those little bottoms just a little higher.  The problem with the cushion, however, is that it often slides to the floor.  In fact, the problem with the cushion in actuality is that often the child will slide to the floor right along with it...

And, thus, disaster is all around us.

Hence, after all the holiday festivity was over this past weekend, I enlisted my parental units to help me save the day.

Piano bumpers became our project,

and my father and I braved the frigid outdoors in order to carve up piles and piles of wood,

to great success.

We piled those boards on top of each other, 

 gluing

and drilling with great aplomb.

Then, we dragged them inside with our frozen fingers, 

for Phase 2 of saving the day.

 We enlisted the help of my hilarious mother,

 who is "a very straight cut" (or so she's been told), and proceeded to measure and cut while we chatted away.

We provided a cushion for those little bottoms,

[discovering along the way that the talent of the straight cut is not necessarily a hereditary one],

 and wrapped those bumpers up like the sturdy packages of deliverance that they promised to be.

 We worked very hard together, solving problems left and right.

And then, by the end of the night,

I was jumping up and down with glee at the excitement of those piano babies, who have been asking me for months:

"When are you gonna make those things?!"

 They're made babies, they're made--

and from disaster we are saved!

Birthday, A Treat

The birthday boy's actual day

  dawned the day after our family feast,

 so we gathered around that table again

for the best feast of all.

[It's not my birthday! Why do I get such tasty treats?!]

Then we had more time, 

 to chat,

to play.

Then, because a birthday isn't a birthday without some reminiscing of years gone by,

 Mom pulled out boxes of our childhood for us to dig through,

 full of things long forgotten,

perhaps even long longed-for.  [???]

Happy Birthday Davy-O!
Thanks for giving us a treat of a day!

Let's Keep Giving, Thanks

This year marked the first Thanksgiving of my entire family being together, so you can imagine the level of excitement that such a day held.

It began with preparations,

hanging out in the kitchen

while waiting for others to arrive.

Then,

the table set and waiting,

we made our way around it.

 We passed the food,

gathered it to our plates.

And then,

 we promptly cleaned those plates,

and gathered the moments to ourselves.

We had to take a break then,

so the men lounged,

the grandparents played,

the siblings cleaned the kitchen.

Then there was time to let the food settle,

 talk to someone you hadn't had the chance to in a while,

play with Grandma & P-Pa's toys.

Soon we found ourselves at the table again though,

 for pie,

and surprise birthday celebrations.

Uncle Dave and Daniela bonded over candle-blowing 

[both actual and simulated],

 and then we just hung out, 

enjoying each other

and the moments of cute thrown in by our littlest one.

 Then there was more catching up,

 more cute,

 some fierce competition,

even more cute.

And,

 although no one actually ate the birthday cake,

at least the mystery of why the Graham Cracker Cream Pie turned green was solved by the end of the night.

[???]

All together, a gift we gave each other.

Let's keep giving it kids--

let's give it with many thanks.

My ladies

Though the icy conditions on Tuesday threatened to keep me in PA longer than I planned, Wednesday morning I woke up to cleared streets and a forecast less daunting than originally prescribed.

Hence, I threw my suitcase in my car
and headed New Jersey-ward.

I had an appointment to keep after all,

a pie making date with my maternal-side ladies.

The recipe, my great-grandmother's.

The keeper of it,

her last remaining daughter.

Her daughters:

my favorite ladies to laugh with,

since we've been laughing this way for all of my life.

After the pies were safely in the oven,

we sat together for awhile,

having a late afternoon 'cuppa teah'.

A lovely afternoon,

with my ladies.