Fine Arts Festival: Heidi's turn to shine

This Sunday Heidi played the piano for the offertory at our evening service. She was nervous, but she did a fine job. She had the first part memorized, and then couldn't find her place when she ran out of memory, so she started again, this time remembering to look at the music the entire song. In honor of Father's Day, she played the hymn "This is My Father's World."

The piano playing reminded me though that I neglected to get back to blogging some of the girls' end of the year activities; one of them being the fine arts festival at school. During the two evenings the spring play was being performed, the art teacher set up k-12 artwork from the entire year in the library. She worked really hard to pull all this together, and it looked fantastic. All of the students had at least one piece of artwork in the show. Previous to the showing, judges had awarded a ribbon to the "best in show" for each grade grouping (K, 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, etc). There were also two "runner up/well done" ribbons given in each category. It was fun to see all the things they had been learning in art this year. Heidi won "Best of Show" for her picture shown here. Here is Kay standing next to some of her artwork. You can see it at the top of the matting above her head with the large painted sun. Before the play and during intermission times people were free to browse the work which also included writing the students had submitted.

Students were also encouraged to sign up to perform musically as well. (Hence my piano connection, I'm sure you were wondering how that came in!) My very enthusiastic daughters both signed up to play the piano, despite the fact that they had only been back into piano lessons for a few weeks (Kay never having had previous lessons at all)! But they did very well, and it was nice for them to play for the small group gathered in the library. Here is a picture of Heidi playing "Amazing Grace." Kay played "God is So Good," one of my favorite songs! Unfortunately, my camera battery died just as she started playing, so I didn't get a picture of her at the piano. I am very thankful that our school here continues to expand and explore new ways kids can develop the gifts God has given to them.

I couldn't end this blog without this picture of the girls from that evening. Here it is considered VERY COOL to have a "uniform" where several friends, or even better, your whole family wears an outfit made of the same cloth. The girls and I all three had these dresses made. We all like them as they are very comfortable, and the girls were SO excited that they have "twinsie" dresses with Mom. I must confess, we haven't all THREE worn them together yet... perhaps my Western upbringing cringes thinking about being "twins," but who knows, perhaps we'll coordinate yet. Heidi is a very avid coordinator after all! Wonder where she gets that from!? :)