What do you mean June is over?

I swear time really does go by faster as I get older. I meant to be so much better about posting but time goes by too fast fo rme to keep up. So anyways…

We had a very nice June aside from the summer weather which we all know I can’t stand. (I know, I know; I live in Texas.) We had the excitement of Kyrie’s first summer at girls’ camp which went great. It was definitely very stressful for me to think of having her completely out of touch with us since we’ve not done that before. I personally really struggle with feeling overly panicked at the chance that she could get feeling overwhelmed or stressed out. Of course, every mom cares about that but I have a hard time not getting out of control with it so I was feeling pretty concerned and emotional before she left. Fortunately, she has very attentive Young Women leaders that I knew would take great care of her but that only helped my brain. Oddly enough, once she left for camp, I didn’t hardly worry at all…until I heard they were going to hit 100 degrees every day of camp. Ack.

She had an awesome time and did a great job handling a couple of hinky situations that made me feel proud of my quirky, generous, compassionate offspring. We definitely missed her while she was gone and had many interesting discussions about what life will be like when she moves out in not that many years. Weird. We couldn’t find the batteries to our camera so I’ll post a few camp pictures when I get them from other attendees.

One fun thing we got to do while she was gone was host 2 of my little nieces overnight. My sister, Leslie, had a special chance to take a trip to visit Mom with just her suitcase and little baby in tow. Joshua & Grant stayed home in San Antonio with Dad and Rea & Hatty came up and stayed with Terri. Since Leslie flew out of DFW, we got to see her the night before she flew out and then the night after she came back. More would have been nice but it was fun to get what we could. And Miss Tabitha, while not really any bigger, has gotten so much more interactive and is just SOOOOOO darling!! Anyway, as some of you may have read, Terri’s little boy burned his feet on some sand playing outside which was crazy. That poor little boy! And Mommy! Anyway, I offered to take Rea & Hatty overnight in case Tylerboy had a rough night. Luckily Tyler did fine but Terri’s baby, Violet, had a hard night with teething. Having the girls over was fun, though. They are so funny and adorable. They were quite tickled with our doggy’s love of curling up right on their laps. (They have a much larger dog so that doesn’t work with him.) He was happy to have some little girls to lay on since Kyrie was gone. It was a good match.

Rob’s job news has been improving some. There is a chance that TI will be buying another of his machines which would be awesome for Rob’s company in general and for Rob in particular. There is also quite a bit of work coming in for Rob which is nice when you look at the books for the DFW area. His supervisor mentioned that it seems fairly unlikely TEL will make more cuts in DFW since it won’t really save them enough money in comparison with shutting down some other area’s office. Also, they know DFW is a place they will be in the future as things turn around so they don’t want to have to rehire and retrain everyone…not a good investment in the future. He’s been teaching a training class over the last couple of weeks that has gone well. He’s been the one who had to create it from scratch so it was a bit stressful to get together but it’s gone very well. TI is happy with what he’s doing which is what really matters. So we remain happy that he has a job he loves and that it seems to be stabilizing some.

We’ve had the chance to be involved in 3 baptisms in our ward in the last few weeks. It’s been really awesome. I always love to see people making that choice, taking that step into a new life. Since our Marriage & Family Relations class ended, we’ve been going to the Gospel Essentials class so that’s how we got involved in so many. I asked them if they had a pianist and they said they didn’t so I volunteered. I also got to do all the programs which I LOVE to do so that was fun.

When Kyrie heard I was going to do play for them, she asked if she could be the chorister. She’s not done this before but had learned how to lead music in Activity Days. I said sure she could. We went over the songs we were going to do so she could practice. She was getting the hang of it pretty well. I talked to her about how it’s different when you do things in front of people but to remember that she can’t really mess up. While a good chorister can help people stay a little tighter, a bad chorister doesn’t really hurt anything at all. We talked about focusing on the downbeat if she messes up, etc.

The baptism was very well attended which she was still good with. She got up to lead the first song and it was definitely harder in front of people. She kept going but I could tell it was frustrating for her. When I sat down after the song, I asked Rob (who was next to her) if she was okay. He said she was and then looked down to see she was crying. I had her come sit by me and we talked about how it was really okay. She had done good to keep going and everyone had kept singing just fine. I asked her if she wanted me to have another sister from our ward lead the closing song or if she wanted to still do it and told her I knew she could do it fine. She said she’d still do it which I knew was hard. She did a little better on the 2nd one but didn’t feel so upset by it. It was good she hung in there because the next day was another baptism and she did way better. A week later was #3 and she was AWESOME!! I actually found myself following her lead rather than leading her with my playing. I love my girl.