"One thing at a time"

On Saturday, October 20th, Erik participated in the MTNA competition (music teacher's national association) for the first time in the Senior division (15-18 yr old). We casually talked about it last year but we knew that the program to prepare for is quite rigorous and we felt that he was not ready last year. This september marked 6 years of Erik's piano journey. So he has begun the 7th year as of this month.  The photo above was taken as we were leaving to head out the door in the morning to the competition. His spirit was calm, happy, and excited. I am simply amazed how far he has traveled in the mere 6 years,,,, .  Although, I studied piano for 12 years, I do not have the same level of ability to understand what he can understand now and I am delighted to say that my son completely moved on to a realm I am not able to fully understand. I am also amazed at the humble spirit he possesses through it all. He was very humble when the announcement was mad...

 No accident is ever convenient especially when it occurs 40 hours before a piano competition that your child has worked incredibly hard to prepare spending literally hundreds of hours, not to mention the miles we drove to get him to and fro the piano teacher who is an hour and 45 minutes away weekly. It was one of those stress that I sensed in the few seconds when I realized that I could not avoid some sort of a collision. On thursday morning last week, I was thinking that we hope that we won't have issues that wold cause Erik to get sick or get his fingers injured playing ball. Erik does not seem to worry too much about what the next day is going to be in most of the days he lives. He is a happy teenager even before the competition...... So we were hit by a car on Thursday afternoon and I was quite shook up... The damage was not severe but a wreck is a wreck and the thought of how it could have been worse or a another inch forward could have changed the impact and the resul...

So, this is for the process of decision making. I have had a time trying to make my mac to cooperate. Processing the short movies is not difficult. Processing it to shrink it itself is not difficult either. But when it comes to the time to upload it, for some reason, the system did not recognize that my file was available as a shrunk format. Facebook portal did not recognize the file. Meaning that when you try to upload something, you must first find the file from Facebook upload application. Somehow, it is not there, even though it exists. Finally, I decided to remove the movie file from my mac and place it on an outside memory source.  At last, the file was visible,,,Hope this works. Wasted too much time and caused such a delay. Sorry Francis! (Francis is Erik's Piano Teacher)

Many exciting events fill the life of a person. I always watched those who seemed to do well at everything they did. I was often surrounded by many of those growing up and I was often those who never won anything no matter what I did. I always accepted it as the limitation and I truly learned to enjoy what I have whether it was worthy of recognition or not. I also enjoyed having a loving mother who appreciated my limited musical skills in whatever I did with warm encouragement. She had the heart to accept and enjoy her child's best with such satisfying smile. Otherwise, I would not have stuck to my flute or piano for this many years. We lived in relatively crowd residential area where my practice was audible to neighbors through the apartment walls.  Often my neighbors assumed that, since i was the older child,  any good and impressive pieces were my pieces of music. In fact, usually, it was my younger brother who played longer and more impressive pieces. And that was OK wi...

As we continue to pray for our dear friend whose healing is on our top list of prayer request,,,,,,,we  join the family in their rejoice today of 'Seeing their son, Will SMILE".  Yes, a smile, as simple as it may seem to our daily life when we take EVERYTHING for granted, a smile can be a tremendous gift that encourages the hearts of Will's family and his supporters. Will is very much alive in spirit! Erik went to school with Will's sweet sister, Lindsey in Nashville before we relocated to Louisiana. We do not know the exact etiology of Will's recent hemorrhage in his brain (it was not accident or trauma related) and we do not know the extent of the healing required for this young man before he regains much of what we consider "normal life". But he lives on with courage, and his family press on with unwavering strength to continue to praise the Creator who Loves Will and selected Will for this unusual experience.  When I encountered breast cancer for a...

Happy Mother's Day!   Erik woke up and while he was busy getting ready, he looked at me and stopped what he was doing for a second and wished me a great day. Little did I know that this mother's day would be very special in many ways.  Around this time of May of 2003, I was finishing my last Chemotherapy of Adriamycin and Cytoxin. Long year of treatment with Chemo, Radiation, Surgery and More Chemo was finally coming to an end. I remember frantically thinking that I needed energy to plan a small birthday party for Erik, which was coming up quickly,,,on May 27th.  The complex thoughts of the year drove me to pray, so I can remain well until at least he turns 15. Don't ask why I picked that age of 15...Erik turns 15 on May 27th this month.  I am in awe of the blessing of life. Very grateful to have seen him grow up the last 10 yrs. He is almost my height or just barely passed me up, which is also amazing remembering back how he was always the smallest in ...

The cardinal family created their nest near our window in the front of our house. The nest is viewable from our bathroom window and it has sent me off to the bath room more frequently just to take a peak out the window.....I discovered the nest two weeks ago on Monday... so the nest may have been there for a while before that. Now, I was out of town last 5 days and I can not tell when theses babies hatched.... but from the look of the feather, I suspect that they are three days old?  I watched all three get their food from their Daddy today. What an excellent experience for any of us to get to see something like this?  These things always happen while my son is in school so I had to ,, just had to take shots.... I am grateful for my camera and the lens that allow me to capture something that often my naked eyes to not see......I was quite surprised to see the detail on photos.  The fuzzy feather on their head and the ...