What’s new?

Let’s see, what’s new around here? We had Super Bowl party on Super Bowl Sunday with our church family, and enjoyed the party even though the Cardinals lost.

We’ve made some plans for Spring Break, Daddy and Sam will be flying out to Arizona for Grandpa’s birthday! Originally, only Daddy was going to go, but Grandma and Grandpa are working on a construction project in their new house, so they decided that Sam should go to help out. It should be a great experience for him!

The weather here has stayed close to seventy degrees for several days now, and Mama and I are trying to get some garden work done before it gets cold again.

Jesse is still enjoying his college experience and is planning for a trip to Rome this summer! Samford is providing an expenses paid trip to Rome for the students in the honors program (‘The Fellows’)! They will be traveling with one of Jesse’s favorite teachers, but this isn’t part of a class, this is just for the experience! Unfortunately, the trip is taking place directly after Finals, so he’ll be gone during his birthday! Nathan can have a whole birthday to himself this year, but of course, he’ll miss having Jesse there.

We’re hoping to be able to take another trip up to Arizona as a family during summer break, and have already starting planning for that.

Piano is going very well, Samuel had a big piano competition recently and is about to head into another one, so he’s been practicing an hour and a half every day! It’s tough for a Freshman entering these high school competitions and competing against Juniors and Seniors, but he’s been doing so well! All of us will be competing in the Solo Festival this Saturday. The Solo Festival is not a competition; judges score individual performances but there are no winners or losers. The goal is to get a Superior rating from both judges. Several people have asked if Jesse is still playing piano; he continues to practice whenever he can, finding a few pianos on campus and practicing at home on the weekends, but he is no longer taking lessons from Mrs. Shugart. He hopes to be able to take piano lessons on campus next year, but decided against that distraction this year as a Freshman.

I hate to mention it in case I jinx it, but we have all remained healthy so far! This is the time of year to get sick and we know a lot of people who have, but hopefully we’ll survive it!

If I can ever get videos to work on the blog, I’ll post videos of all of us playing our Solo Festival pieces at a recital last week! But don’t hold your breath…