Our New Toy

For the past couple months or so, Josh has been saying how much he wants a Jeep so 2 weeks ago, he finally found one that he liked and bought it! He's been putting it to good use and took it hunting with him last weekend. Yesterday, we took it for a drive through the mountains to try out the 4-wheel drive.

Here's the Jeep. As you can see it came with some pretty good-looking tires and rims for the summer and some airplane landing lights on top that had been added by the seller. The view from the top of the mountain was pretty great.

At some points of the drive the drop-off was so steep that I would look out the window and be looking down a cliff like this one. It was probably better for me to be looking straight ahead but I didn't want to miss out on the view!

We had a great time getting some fresh mountain air and climbing the mountain in Josh's new toy. I'm sure we have many more good times to look forward to with our new Jeep!

Piano

I'm excited to announce that we have a piano!!! Thank you so much to all those who helped bring it up and/or move it into out tiny apartment! I especially want to thank my Dad who was thoughtful enough to notice how much I missed playing the piano and found one that he put a lot of hard work into to fix it up and tune it. I sure owe him and everyone else who helped a ton!



As the saying goes, "If you don't use it, you lose it." Up until this week I could probably count the number of times I've played the piano in the past year on one or two hands. It's not that I haven't wanted to play the piano. Even in church, when we moved into our ward a year ago I was asked what my ideal calling would be and I said Relief Society pianist. They already had someone for that so I am the chorister instead (which I love) but I have felt my talent wasting away more and more each day. About a month or so ago the pianist was not there so I said I would play the piano if someone else would lead. I was not expecting the reaction of shock from others. "I didn't know you could play the piano!" I didn't realize I was hiding it! It was a humbling experience.



What was even more humbling was when I sat down at the piano yesterday ready to play all of my old favorite songs. My fingers were not used to finding the keys and my eyes were not nearly as quick as they used to be at reading the notes on the page! I had to think for a minute to even remember the order of the sharps!! Don't ask me to play any fancy cadences or scales because I probably can't remember how!



After the humbling realization that I have a ton of work to do to relearn this skill, I played the piano for about an hour and was able to work out some of the rusty old kinks. The void of playing the piano is no more [sorry Josh ;)].