whew! what a day!

A few weeks back I filled in our social calender with a Christmas parade on Saturday morning and Will and Mary's piano recital on Sunday afternoon. However, 1 week ago I found out that the recital was changed to Saturday as well. I learned early in this parenting gig that I can usually only handle one event per day, especially with toddlers in tow.

I waffled for days, until 8 am this morning whether we were going to let Will ride on the Cub Scout float and let Mary walk with the Brownies in the parade or we were going to skip the whole traffic, filling diaper bags, finding bathrooms in strange towns thing. Well, I'm glad we all went 'cause the kids were good and the parade was pretty impressive with 3 bands, antique cars, more scouts than you can shake a stick at, and loads of candy.

We had just enough time for lunch and to change into nice clothes before we piled back into the van to head out to the recital. Tim had to hold Timmy in the hallway most of the 90 minutes, Charlie and Maggie quietly munched on cookies for the last 30 minutes, but it was a beautiful recital. The children ranged from a Kindergartner to high school seniors, and while there were mistakes, parts forgotten, and shy performers, it was lovely to hear both the perfect and the errors. It showed the children that if they practice enough and have the drive they can play Moonlight Sonata, and that they are doing well compared to children their age. We are going to continue the increased practice times we have been insisting on and perhaps one day we will hear our children play beautiful classical pieces by Mozart and Beethoven.

Timmy is napping soundly and the celebratory Mexican restaurant dinner might have to be postponed, but I sure hope not because I need a bottle of Corona brought to me along with a dinner I don't have to cook or clean up after.

Better make that 2 Coronas.