Thursday, December 24, 2009

Old-Fashioned Arizona Christmas

Every year since we have been here, we have to discuss how weird it feels to be shopping for a Christmas tree in short sleeves and how traditions are to go to the park and have a picnic Christmas day and how getting a new bike for Christmas is not a disappointment because you can actually go out and ride it.

The discussion always seems to start with our first sighting of the decorated cactus each season. Here it is. It definitely says "Merry Christmas, from Arizona!" Hope you all have an absolutely wonderful holiday no matter what you are wearing or how you spend the day!

The One-Man Band

Since our trip to Utah last summer where Noah got a taste of the piano, he has been taking piano lessons from a wonderful teacher that is a part of our church. Noah has really gotten excited about playing it and really feels a sense of pride when he learns a new song which is so awesome because he is rarely proud of himself for anything and more often feels like he can't do anything. I have to hand it to him also - he has to practice on a very small and old casio keyboard and I know it is sometime very frustrating for him. We did not want to get him anything serious until we knew he was going to be serious about learning to play. Maybe for Christmas:)

His teacher is also a wonderful hammered dulcimer player and has taught Noah to play some. He spends the majority of his time on the piano, but has quickly learned a couple of songs on the dulcimer - which is very impressive since he only gets to play it during his lessons for a few minutes every other week.

He has an incredible gift of memory and and once he has learned a song he plays everything without music in front of him. The poor child got his mother's musical ear, which means he cannot hear or sing in key so he does not know if he is always playing the right note just by listening and cannot tell when something is out of tune. Thank goodness he has his father here to help him with his practicing at home.

Noah has also just begun learning to play the recorder in music at scholl. He is less thrilled about this instrument (but who isn't).

Here is Noah at his first ever recital and he did an outstanding job!