As we come to the close of another exciting school year, I can’t help but reflect on the fact that it’s now been exactly 5 years since we bought our house. I remember looking forward to June, 2014 for a long time; not because I knew we’d be buying a house then, but because I knew I’d be graduating from college then. I remember it feeling so far away (just as it does now) and not knowing how I was going to make it (I was working full-time at Amazon for my final year and a half of school). I remember the feeling when we got the keys to our house, sitting there on our (now replaced) front porch knowing school was done and our family (which would soon be 5 people) had a house. It was a good feeling then and it continues to be one now, it’s just hard to believe that 5 years has passed in the meantime.
Anyway, as usual for our family, all is well – aaand we’re all as busy as ever. Busy is good, we like busy – in fact I think we thrive on it. The kids aren’t going to know what it’s like to have nothing going on or nothing to do. Today’s example of our busy lifestyle was something we’ve been looking forward to for a while – the girls’ dance recital. Ava and Elise have been in the same dance class together for several months now, and today was their big performance! Their first performance was a jazz piece to a remix of one of the songs from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, then their second was a tap dance to Yellow Submarine by The Beatles.
They both looked amazing in their bright yellow dresses, with their hair and makeup all done up as well. The performance was great, and they both managed to sneak us a little wave or blow us a kiss from stage. It was amazing, as well as a teeny bit emotional. Unfortunately they only got about 10 minutes of stage time out of a 2 hour performance, but kudos to Enzo who was very well behaved the entire time. Instead of giving them flowers after their big day, we decided to do something a little more fun, so we all went out for fancy frozen yogurt, which included all the toppings a kid could ask for.
Each of the kids is doing well in terms of winding up the school year. We’ve been seeing good progress from each of them in areas that they’ve been struggling with, so that’s been great. Ava’s reading has come a long way, as has Elise’s, and Enzo is doing much better writing letters and numbers. The growth we’ve seen from each of them throughout the school year has been incredible, but there’s no doubt the one who has grown the most physically is Elise. She shot up like a beanstalk this year and suddenly finds herself with only about half her wardrobe still fitting. Even though we see her daily, we still can’t believe how fast she’s growing. An epic growth spurt for sure.
We recently attended a birthday party for one of Ava’s hockey teammates, and the party was being held at the rink where they practice. I was out skating with Ava and Elise (who is still enjoying figure skating lessons) and then, to my surprise, out comes Enzo in hockey skates with no balance bars. He skated right up to me from across the ice without falling once. I was practically floored, so then I led him over to the hockey area where they had some sticks and pucks out. He ended up grabbing a stick and playing around with pucks the entire time. He was passing pucks to me and having a blast. We actually had a hard time getting him off the ice. It was funny because I had been thinking that hockey wasn’t going to be his thing, which was totally fine, but seeing how much fun he was having out there made it obvious that this was something we should let him do more often. Ever since then he keeps telling me “Daddy I’m going to be a hockey skater!”
Speaking of hockey, Ava is enjoying playing off-season 3 on 3 every Thursday night, and I’m playing different weekly drop-in games. We’ve also been keeping up the early Thursday morning “dawn patrol” practice sessions where I get her up at 5:30 and we go to the rink for an hour before school/work. We don’t do it every single Thursday, but we’re there quite a bit, and I’m not sure who loves it more. It’s definitely my favorite way to start a workday, and since I work from home every Thursday it all works out quite nicely.
Jessica has been staying super busy lately at the girls’ school lately; she teaches art in both of their classes, and as of recently she also started doing Junior Achievement lessons with the kids. This is on top of working two nights a week at El Gaucho, and those are usually late nights.
The school recently held their annual art walk and unfortunately Jessica couldn’t go because she was working, but I took the kids and I honestly couldn’t believe how many different art projects on display were ones that were led by Jessica. I also couldn’t believe the quality of art she was able to coax out of these super young kids. I’ve also never seen a parent volunteer and get involved like she does. It’s really impressive, and I know she loves doing it, plus obviously the girls love having her around. It still takes a lot of commitment though and she definitely deserves a lot of credit.
Things are good in my world. I recently started managing a couple vendor/contractor engineers on my team, which is a great way to get your feet wet with management without actually changing roles or committing to anything. I’m excited about the opportunity to help people grow their careers, yet also thankful to not be stepping away from a coding role for myself at this time. Yesterday I gave a technical presentation to our team that was well received, and I’m getting ready to give another one soon.
Recently I’ve been feeling like I need to mix things up musically because I haven’t been getting together with friends to jam. When all you do is practice the guitar alone, it starts losing the fun aspect of playing, so I finally bit the bullet and started getting into something that I’ve historically always avoided – recording. I’ve never really gotten into recording because I know that it’s not an easy thing to get into. It takes a lot of practice and learning, plus it can be expensive, which is fine, but I’m already spread pretty thin so I’ve always focused musically on playing rather than on recording myself play.
I can honestly say that seeing Jessica paint rocks ended up being a catalyst for me getting into recording, and it’s all based around the concept of having a finished product. When you paint or draw something, eventually it’s going to be complete, and then you can do with that finished piece whatever you wish. Same thing goes for recording a song, but when all you do is practice an instrument every day, unless you record it, you never really have anything to show for all your time spent practicing.
The other catalyst for me was thinking about a song in much the same way that I think about one of these blog posts. It’s a snapshot in time, and a relic of yourself that can live on into eternity. Part of the reason I never recorded songs earlier was that I was afraid of poor production quality, or maybe my skills in some technical area of playing weren’t good enough yet. I’d find myself saying “First I need to take this online lesson, or learn this specific technique.” That’s all fine, but it never resolves. There’s always a reason to delay.
So finally a couple weeks ago, over Memorial Day weekend, I gave myself a challenge to write and record an instrumental song at home. I figured I’d need that extra day, and we didn’t have plans for the holiday weekend, so I just went for it. As it turned out I got so into it that I had it done before going to bed Sunday night, so the extra day wasn’t even necessary. The song was going to be called “Birds in Flight” because that’s what the main riff caused me to think of when playing, but I wrote the song in the key of A major, so I decided to incorporate that into the title, which became “Birds in Flight – A major journey”.
A few days later I was onto the next one, this time going for more of a 70’s blues rock vibe. I decided to call it “Must Exit” as a tribute to a racing horse my grandparents were partial owners of when I was a kid. I always thought the name was cool, and it fit the vibe I was going for. After a few days it was done, so as of right now, both songs have been uploaded to my SoundCloud account. It’s funny because when I listen to them I get excited in the sense that I’m proud to have created them, but I also cringe a little at the spots where I feel like I kinda messed up. However the response I’m getting from friends has been really positive and encouraging, so I’m going to keep it up. In fact this morning I started recording another new one called “Which way is up”. Hopefully it won’t be long before this one is finished because I have a lot of ideas to work on. The way I see it, I’ve been taking lessons and practicing at home for years, so it’s fun to finally just start letting all this stuff out.
Here are some photos from today, both before and after the recital, plus some of my favorite pics from a recent photo shoot Jess and the kids attended. Happy Summer!
