Today: feeling fragile, content, and hopeful.

I'm feeling a little fragile over here.

Got one of "those" emails from school yesterday and we have one of "those" meetings on Monday. I loathe "those" situations and have to fight terribly with my thoughts to remind myself that I'm not being judged (at least that's what they reassure me) by the teachers.

Then I had an uncomfortable conversation today with another missionary parent. One in which I felt judged about my parenting, as well as about the "outrageousness" of doing a year home assignment. Arggghhh. I hate conversations like that. Where the other person feels they are right and you are definitely wrong, and there is nothing that you can say to reconcile the two because the other person isn't open to understanding. We didn't argue, but I surely came away feeling yucky.

On the up-side, today I attended my first off-campus event as a CAJ parent-of-fine-arts-participant. Up till this year we had no one doing any group extra-curricular music at school.

Our eldest son has shown no interest in either musical instruments or choirs.

Our middle son hasn't been interested in giving up play time to join the elementary choir, which meets after school. But this year he's learning percussion in school time and joined the 5th grade band, which is also in-school time. As the band consists of beginners, we haven't seen them perform yet, though I believe that will be rectified next month at the Christmas Concert.

Our youngest son joined the elementary choir just as soon as he could: 3rd grade. Today I accompanied the choir to a concert put on by a neighbouring local government, in a beautiful venue.

The concert went for three hours, but as it involved kids they had two intermissions as well as some nice interactive stuff in the last hour. I particularly enjoyed the two bands that played.

It's a pity that we spent all day inside, however, because this hall is on the edge of one of our favourite parks and it was a gorgeous day! At least three members of the family were able to enjoy the park. David took the older two home before the concert was over, deciding that they'd be unlikely to remain content for the whole three hours.

I captured this on the edge of the park on our way home.

Tonight I'm looking forward to a quiet night. We've had a run of later nights. Wednesday is always late, with the younger two doing karate till 7. Thursday we went to a "Co-corricular Dessert Evening" to celebrate the accomplishments of those who  represented our school in sports and fine arts in the last few months. Friday night we had guests over for dinner. Tonight, however, there is nothing on. I'm happy! David and I might even get a 45 minute episode of CSI in.