Austin's Piano Recital

 
A couple weeks ago, Austin played at his first piano recital. He has been taking piano lessons for a while from a talented young pianist in our ward who is the sister of one of his good friends. She has generously offered Austin her lessons for free as she tries out teaching. Her mom also teaches a lot of piano students, so everyone else playing at the recital was one of her mom's students.

Austin with his piano teacher

He worked really hard on his piece, and it was fun to watch him play it at the recital. Unfortunately, our camera battery died at just the wrong time, so we weren't able to record him playing at the actual recital. It was particularly sad to me that I wasn't able to record his bow...I guess he didn't quite understand that he was supposed to be facing the audience when he bowed. Instead, he bowed to the piano with his back to the audience and made everyone laugh. At least we did record him playing his piece at home though.

Fathers and Sons Campout

This weekend I took Austin on the stake's fathers and sons campout. The ward provided most of dinner and other people brought chips and salads to share. I volunteered to bring a cobbler but it turned out kind of runny and there was a lot left over. Besides eating dinner, there wasn't much else planned.  The other kids played all sorts of games in the field, but Austin seemed most entertained by just being inside the tent or playing bocce with me. A lot of people left without even camping, and the people who did camp out left first thing in the morning without even eating breakfast.  Austin and I had a really nice breakfast though: bacon, French toast from cinnaburst bread, and some juice. Then we packed up and left. It wasn't a really exciting trip for me, but I think Austin really liked it.

Memorial Day Hike to Elephant Rock

On Memorial Day we went hiking with my brother Allan and his family. This was the first time they tried taking their little girl hiking, and it is everyone's first hike of the season. We decided to try out the Mueller Park Trail to Elephant Rock.

This trail turned out to be a very pleasant one with lots of shady patches along the way and a very mild gradual incline. It was a bit longer though...about 7.4 miles round trip. I was very happy and impressed that Austin made it the whole way with minimal complaints of being tired!

There was a lot of balsamroot in bloom along the trail

The trail was also pretty crowded. Many trails are on Memorial Day, so that wasn't a surprise. At the end of the trail there is a resting place with a couple of benches. We ate our lunch there and enjoyed the nice view.

Here we are at the end of the trail! Unfortunately, our volunteer
photographer didn't really get the view from here or Elephant Rock in
the picture...or even Zipper.

From the resting area there was a more difficult short trail to the top of Elephant Rock. I ended up being the only one who went up to the top. Allan and Katie had to head back, and Austin would have had a hard time making it, so Nate just stayed with him while I went up.

View from the top of Elephant Rock

After hiking, we grabbed a refreshing custard treat and headed home to clean up. That evening we went to the traditional family "hot dog roast." Austin particularly enjoyed partnering with his dad to play water balloon volleyball after dinner. Unfortunately I forgot the camera though, so I don't have any pictures or video of the action there...

Mother's Day & More

This year we had a nice dinner at my brother's new house for Mother's Day. Nate went to a lot of effort to make an amazing dessert: a fruit tart. That is something neither of us has attempted before, so I was particularly impressed when he made a nice pastry cream and everything. It turned out looking fantastic and tasting great too! Just goes to show how seriously amazing a husband I have...

I gave my mom, my grandmothers, and Nate's mom some honey almond cold process soap that I had made. It even had almond oil, beeswax, and honey in it. It is probably the fanciest soap I have attempted yet, as I had to do it in two batches: one to make the embeds and one to make the rest of the soap. I had to carefully carve, paint, and cut the almond slices that went on top.

Nate got me a table to put our planer on so we can actually use it. Austin picked out a balloon for me that said "Mom You're the Best." He also gave me a paper he filled out in primary that I loved; his answers made me laugh since he obviously projected a lot of his favorites onto me.

Then there have been a couple random events of sort that happened during May. For example, I was startled to open our barn one day an find a mound of hair breathing on a mulch pile we have inside. I wasn't entirely sure what animal had taken up residence there at first, but I soon found that it was a racoon.

It didn't seem to have much interest in leaving for awhile, but after deciding to go out and try spraying it with our hose to hasten its departure, we found it had finally seemed to leave on its own accord. We were very glad when it moved on...especially since by being in our barn it was right next to our chickens.

Speaking of which, we got our first "fairy egg" from one our our hens late in May as well. I had never seen such a thing before and found it looked very odd next to our normal sized eggs; it was only about 1/4 to 1/3 the size of them. Chickens only lay such tiny eggs when something disturbs them or before their reproductive systems fulled kick into gear. It must have been the former in this case.