A “Bench” of Personality

The longer I am married the more I have come to realize that I am the big thinker in the marriage. Let’s build a house! Let’s go to Disney World! Let’s paint the piano!

All of these big ideas stress out my detailed oriented thinking husband. I never have a plan of how we are going to accomplish these things, I just always say let’s do it. My husband, ever the detail man, begins to lay down the no’s. I promptly ignore him and say we can do it! Whatever it is, I have faith in us. Whatever it is, he sees the obstacles. He’s an engineer and it shows.

I’m fairly sure it’s what makes our marriage work almost 18 years later. One of us is the gas, one of us is the brakes. Without my husband, I would surely be in debt, live in a fully decked out house, and keep up with the Jones’. (OK, I’m actually not that bad – I’m the one who cut cable to cut costs.) Without me, my husband would surely live in a house with only a mattress and a tv, drive a car from the early 90’s, and die as a lonely miser who would have prepaid his own funeral at cost. (Ok, he’s actually not that bad either – he would live with a mattress, tv, cable, and pizza delivery).

My very long and convoluted point being….I wanted to paint the piano.

“Come on…let’s paint the piano!”

My husband has not been impressed each time I have mentioned this for the past two years.

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In an effort to reach those 18 years of marriage and then move onto 19 I decided this was one of those things that I am just going to let drop. It’s really not that important and is a huge task.

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So instead we recovered the piano bench in 10 minutes on one of the snow days.

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Here’s how the project went down:

Me – “Here’s a piece of fabric to cover the piano bench with.”

My husband – “Is it big enough? Are we going to staple it in? Do we need to take the leather off first? Will we have to replace the hinges?

Me: “I don’t know…let’s just do it.”

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I believe all sides are happy with the result and thrilled that this project has come to an end.

But don’t you worry dear…I’m dreaming up all sorts of projects that you will love.

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Because we can do it!

Piano Week

Andrew & Alex started piano lessons last week. In an attempt to add to their excitement, we had PIANO WEEK at our house.

What might you ask is Piano Week?

Well, it’s just a week of activities I thought up or found which dealt with music. This was an attempt to give a little structure to our summer days. The focus being on little.

Here’s PIANO WEEK:

Visited: a piano store and received a tour by a very enthusiastic employee

Created: Alex created a power point about John Williams while Andrew made a poster. I originally thought they would choose Beethoven or Mozart but once we stumbled upon John Williams there was no turning back. One morning we spent over an hour watching him conduct on You Tube.

Read Books: 1. Beethoven – A Value Tales book 2. Duke Ellington by Andrea Davis Pinkney  3. Ludwig van Beethoven by Eric Summerer  4. Keyboards by Wendy Lynch

Made: Thumb pianos – directions found here

Listened: to a Mixed Classical CD from Target in the car all week

Food: We ate SHARP cheese, ate BACHli (I’ll be honest – Derek and I are the only ones who ate the broccoli), talked about fish SCALES while we ate fish sticks, and planned to make cinnamon FLATbread but never got around to it.

We also made dessert PIANOS compliments of Alex. We used ice cream bars but white Kit Kats bars would make prefect piano keys.

Movies: We watched the movie Beethoven with Charles Grodin and Bonnie Hunt. Yes I know it has nothing to do with music but the kids loved it.

We capped off the week with a trip to eat ice cream at Braum’s (BRAHM). I wanted to finish up the week at a piano bar but Derek thought otherwise.

We had some LOWS and HIGHs during piano week but overall it was enjoyable. The boys have enthusiastically practiced piano everyday since their first lesson and can’t wait to find out what this week’s activities will focus on.

What fun things are you doing this summer?


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