In The Hartland: Tickling the Ivories

Every year since Lia started Pre-K, I have added an extra activity to her schedule. During her Pre-K year, she took gymnastics and swim lessons. During Kindergarten, we continued with gymnastics and swim and added Girl Scouts. For first grade, we kept these three activities and added art class. I decided at that point that four activities at a time was my max. As a result, I knew that one of these activities needed to be dropped if Lia wanted to try something new. All summer long, I had been mulling over what we would do for Lia's second grade year as Lia is constantly saying she wants to try this or she wants to try that. Since she is on the pre-team at her gymnastics facility, she is working towards joining their team after try-outs this coming Spring, so I knew that wasn't an option. And I love her Girl Scout troop so much, that I would really like her to continue with this lovely group of girls until she gets into Junior Girl Scouts and loses interest in the entire thing (which is what I did when I was a girl). So, I realized that she would either need to drop swimming or art class. Since Lia got so competent at swimming without a life jacket this summer at Lake Samm and Priest Lake, I was fine with letting go of swim lessons to let her try soccer for the first time. She has expressed an interested several times in trying out a few other sports and so this seemed like a good time to do that. And after three sessions of art class last school year where the same curriculum was taught each time, I decided that it was time to find something new...like learning to play a musical instrument!
Lia has talked about learning to play the piano for quite some time now...but there was just one problem: we don't own a piano! Minor detail, right? As a result, I never really pushed it. However, when Lia started talking about taking flute lessons this summer, I thought this would be really do-able as a flute is a lot easier to buy than a piano! However, as I started my research, I learned that flute lessons are a bit more pricey than I had hoped for AND I also found out that if Lia was willing to wait until the 5th grade, she could join the school orchestra and start learning how to play the flute for free. So, all of a sudden, we decided to enroll her in piano lessons without a piano in our house! After talking to the most affordable piano teacher in our ward during the first week of school and learning that she actually had a few available spots, I quickly signed up Lia on a Thursday afternoon for a Monday lesson with NO piano to practice on. Talk about putting the cart before the horse! I'm normally such a planner that I found this rather hilarious. So, before I knew it, I spent all of Thursday afternoon during the babies' naps looking for a piano on Craig's List. After Ron got home at 5 p.m., I dashed up to Auburn to a used piano store to supposedly buy a piano. But after getting there and spending an hour with the owner, I realized that what I was looking for was not there. So, I drove back home in bad, rush hour traffic empty handed. At 7 p.m., I started my search all over again on the computer. Since we have a really small spot in our living room where a piano could fit, my search was very specific. I needed a certain size of piano in a certain color (that would match the rest of my living room furniture) that was in good condition and a decent price. At 7:30, I made a call to an owner of the best possible match in our area and was pleased to talk to the sweetest, elderly man who was retiring to Arizona with his wife and who needed to sell their piano before they moved. The piano had been in his wife's family since it was bought brand new over sixty years ago in Oklahoma. His wife learned to play on it as a child before inheriting it from her parents and moving it out to Tacoma many years ago where it has stayed in their home this entire time. All of the boys in their family then took lessons and learned to play the piano on it, too. As much of a family heirloom as it was, no one wanted it and they were happy to sell it to us--even $100 less than their asking price thanks to my bargaining skills!
So, all of a sudden it was 8 p.m. and I had to find a bunch of men to help Ron move a piano the next night! Talk about a bit stressful as we just don't have a lot of people in our town who we feel comfortable asking for this kind of big favor. But after spending an hour on the phone, I managed to find four men to help us with moving the piano at the Tacoma end and four men to help us with moving the piano at the Puyallup end. In addition, Ron and I hopped online and ended up renting a dolly, moving blankets, and a truck with ramps from Uhaul to make sure that our piano got here safely. At 9:30 that night, I collapsed at the kitchen table and ate my dinner! It was quite a night. And I am happy to report that all went as smoothly as we had hoped for on Friday evening. Our friends showed up on time and easily moved this huge piece of furniture safely to our home in less than two hours. The children were thrilled to have it arrive and have been fighting over it ever since! Lia had her first lesson today with Sister Berbert and L.O.V.E.D. it. She came home from her lesson and immediately asked if she could practice. I know that the honeymoon stage will eventually wear off, but I am just enjoying every minute of it while it lasts!