The Month of February and Musical Notes

I must explain the title of this post....First, today is February 1.  I know it sounds strange, but I really love February.  It is the month of love!  And Valentine's Day is one of my very favorite holidays.  As you may know, my mom's birthday is on Valentine's Day!  And so I thought that I would try and blog a memory about her each day leading up to February 14.  My girls are always asking about her and I wanted to record some of my memories for my family to enjoy.  So I will start that tomorrow!
Here is a picture from last Valentine's Day...I am glad that I feel a lot better this February...and that I have my baby Luke to enjoy this year!

And now for the "musical notes" portion of the title!  It has been an amazing musical month for Ashton.  First, she was selected to perform in the SEISTA Honors Orchestra.(stands for South East Iowa....)  She spent the day at a local high school with other students from the area...they practiced and rehearsed and then that night presented a fabulous concert.  She has excelled so much on her violin and really loves it.

Ashton was also asked to sing in the Southeast Iowa Youth Honor Choir which was held yesterday.  It was at a high school in a small town just up the road...and it was an amazing experience!  Ashton has such a great middle school music teacher...she really admires Mr. T so much, and he is just the best.  So he had asked a handful of his students to participate in this great opportunity...and I got to go along too!  (Thanks to good friends and Tod who pitched in at home to make it possible for me to be gone for the whole day!)  There were students from about 20 different schools at the event and during the last month or so, they had all been working on the same music.  Then they came together and worked all day to really polish the songs.  The evening ended with a spectacular concert.  I had brought a bag with me of things to read, but I ended up just sitting the whole day and watching everything that was happening and soaking it all in.  The director was amazing and the kids were so talented.  I absolutely love to see kids participating in music and finding joy in it.  There is such an energy to choirs.  It took me back to my days in choir which I absolutely loved!  The music that they performed was very diverse from a South African song to a Bolivian lullaby to Irving Berlin's "Play for Me a Simple Melody."  It was all wonderful.  And of course, a highlight for me was spending time with just Ashton, such a treat!  We had Subway for lunch and then went out to dinner at Pizza Hut with her classmates and teacher.  It was a very long day (9 AM- 8 PM) but so memorable and worthwhile!  I'm glad that Ashton loves music as much as I do!