Huh...haven't done that in a long time...

I used to sing. No really, I did. I was in all kinds of choirs in high school, including the "elite" Octavos. I enjoyed singing, what I didn't enjoy was the issues so many music people have. My father tried to warn me, you see, his mother, my beloved Grandma Whiting was a music person. She was a guest soloist at the first radio broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. My Grandma Whiting was a wonderful person, and she had some awesome qualities, but she was a force to be reckoned with when it came to music and productions.

I pretty much decided that I was done singing when my high school choir director got mad, threw down his baton, ran into his office and slammed the door. Granted, it was his first year of teaching and we were a pretty mouthy bunch of high schoolers. Anyway, I didn't pursue it when I went to college. At one point I did have to go to the director of the music department to drop a class, and when he saw the form, he looked up and said, "So you're the Whiting I heard about that could sing." I just smiled, thanked him for signing it and left.

So for that last 20 years, it has just been a few little songs here or there-a funeral, a Relief Society lesson, etc. About 9 years ago I did have an inch of my trachea removed because of some scar tissue build up, and I never really planned on singing again, so I was surprised about 6 weeks ago when I got a call from the stake Relief Society about singing in a choir for a Women's Conference with Janice Kapp Perry. Well, I have good days and not so good days, but I gave it a try.

It has been a really long time since I worried about breathing, diction, crescendos, etc. but it brought back a lot of memories from way back when. Well, after it was all over, it turned out to be pretty good, and I guess we sounded ok, anyway, we got a lot of compliments. Maybe I'll do it again, well until someone throws another temper tantrum.

Death by Chocolate Trigonometry

All right, I can't help it...we are a pretty nerdy family. There, I said it, my daughter loves, and I mean LOVES math. She's taking trig as a sophomore and is doing, well, let's just say really good. Anyway, she climbed in the van the other night after tennis practice (that's a whole other blog entry) and started to tell me about her trigonometry assignment that was due next week.

Emily: Mom, I have a big trigonometry assignment we...blah blah blah blah (at this point my eyes have glazed over)... so I thought I would make a big cake (oh, something that caught my attention) and then I would....blah blah blah....with cupcakes around it. What do you think?

Admittedly the only thing I understood was that I needed to make a big cake, and some cupcakes and have stuff for her to draw on the cake with. I told that sounded great, when was it due? I remembered that Allison the Younger had a ginormous cake pan (ok, it was really a 16" round) left over from a smiley face cake she made a couple years ago. So I snagged that, then I called her and asked how many cake mixes it takes to make a cake that big, turns out it was 4! The whole thing turned into a family project that consisted of me making the cake and cupcakes, Scott finding some plywood that we could support a cake that bigon and creating a cover that wouldn't mess it up, Emily doing all the decorating and figures, and of course her little brother making comments such as "I can't believe you're doing your homework on a cake!"

Well, Scott and Emily took it to her teacher this morning and...needless to say, it was a hit.