at last (7/17/08)

Thomas went to "piano camp" for 3 days this week (at the house of my band teacher from middle school-- I have known this woman since I was 11 years old! That was cool enough in itself!) He almost made it through a whole book-- so proud of him-- this was his first experience with piano lessons, and he did so well! He practiced every day on his own, without me telling him to-- he WANTED to.

This one i call, "Crazy person playing the keyboard"... it was his little impression all week long as he practiced at home on this little keyboard we have).


He also had a serious side while practicing...




We have wanted to get him a piano for YEARS... and every time we hear there is someone who wants to give one a way, we somehow just miss it... we try to get there, only it's always just a few minutes behind someone else who ends up getting it. We checked into a piano a few weeks ago, but it was $300 and with me not working in the summer and Andrew's current situation, we just couldn't do it.

So, yesterday, when I picked Thomas up from his last day at camp, Mrs. Ashcraft, the teacher, mentioned to another lady who had her grand-daughters at the camp (they are visiting from another state), that there was a piano at the Habitat Re-Store... apparently Mrs. Ashcraft had volunteered there that morning and saw it. She said it was "playable" and that it had been there a long time and they only wanted $50 for it, but she thought they would take less. My mouth flew open-- I guess she forgot that I had told her that we had been looking for a piano and kept just missing out. I think it hit her when I gasped, and the other lady then asked where the store was, but then also said that she'd have to ship it to North Carolina with the girls (kind-of tongue-in-cheek, so I wasn't sure if she was considering looking at it or not). The lady then didn't seem to be overly interested and we all left. I decided to go look at it (secretly, really feeling like this must be our piano), and I figured if the lady showed up at the store, it might just not be for us. She never showed up, I talked the guy into taking $40. There are two keys in the highest register that stick (we can get them fixed sometime), but the piano is not terribly out of tune and it is really pretty-- a little spinet Wurlitzer. There was a ton of music in the bench, so we also got a bunch of music, and apparently, this was a church piano because there are a bunch of church bulletins with notes-- that made it super cool to us! There are even a few music theory teaching things-- some flashcards for practicing what key something is in-- stuff like that. This TOTALLY all made it feel like this piano was meant for us. And, it was.

Thanks to my dad and his truck, we got it here safely (the guy told me to get that price, I needed to take it THAT day-- this was at 4 and they closed at 5-- Andrew was too far away at work to make it in time)... so... it wasn't easy-- very heavy and on a hot day on top of all of it, but after all that, YAY... this little baby is now ours... at last...



Lynn