Picture this...

Picture this.

A classroom. 25 yellow chairs. 15 music stands. 35 guitars lining the back wall. The bell rings. Here they come. The infamous 6th period class. They trickle in a few at a time, put their book bags down, and head for the guitars. You hear 13 year old chatter of cheating boyfriends, crazy teachers, and whose team is "going down" at P.E. They begin tuning their guitars and playing songs they learned over the weekend. All of them. Each student. All 20 students playing a different song. You feel your hair turning gray as they warm up. You know if you can get through the next 50 minutes without losing your mind, your day will have been successful. 

The timer sounds. You gave up on trying to begin class with a discussion on the second week of school so you announce the warm up song. You count off with the obnoxious steady beat of a metronome, and they begin playing. It's rough at first. You tell them to repeat. They finish the warm up and move onto barre chords. They gripe and complain with every barre chord because "it's too hard" or "it hurts" or "it's dumb". You require them to muscle through barre chords for 15 minutes claiming it will make them better musicians and that eventually barre chords will make playing the guitar easier...secretly knowing you thought the same things when you attempted barre chords yesterday. 

You move on to Christmas music. You require each of the 4 parts to practice individually. You have to constantly remind the other 3 parts to stay quiet while the remaining part rehearses. This lasts for 20 minutes. You play from measure 21 to end with each part and then together. You turn the metronome off. You step up like you are the conductor of an orchestra. You finally get all the 13 year old nervous/excited energy channeled to a goal: playing "Carol of the Bells". You count them off quietly. Part one plays for a measure. Part 2 joins on measure 2. Part 3 joins on measure 3. Measure 4 brings part 4 in. All the students are focused. All the students are engaged. All the students are playing. You are singing the song in your head. It actually sounds...delightful. 

The gray hair is worth it. 

Welcome to my world of music education. 

P.S. I'll be coloring my hair soon.

Hello, I'm Mrs. Wells...

After 10 months of wedding planning, hours and hours of crafting and researching inspiration, and 30 minutes on a stage in front of family and friends, it's finally official.

We're married!

Yes, we've agreed that we feel like we're playing house, but we've also agreed that we don't remember what life was like before marriage. It's been a wonderful 2 and a half weeks.

Some people say they go through withdraws after they get married. They get so into the wedding planning that they actually miss it when it's all over. I am not one of those people. 

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed myself. I tried to make the very most of every moment. Gone are the days of designing invitations, figuring out guest accommodations, house hunting, registering, etc. Here are the days of grocery shopping, attempting to convince my husband (and myself) that I'm a decent cook, maintaining a household, thank you notes, etc. I MUCH prefer my current life stage to my previous life stage. I could go on and on with mushy details of how I'm so glad to have my best friend by my side everyday and how loving, caring, and attentive he is, but I won't bore you with the details. Just know that we're loving married life thus far.

We are now floating in a sea of thank you notes to write, but I'm working on them slowly. Surprisingly, I've enjoyed writing thank you notes because it allows me to 1) sit down and write...it's always been kind of therapeutic for me...and 2) reflect on God's provisions and blessings through the last few months. Our transition into living on our own has been a smooth one, and I know that that has a great deal to do with how our friends and family graciously showered us with blessings and gifts. Because of a "fun decor shower", a furniture fund shower, several miscellaneous showers, a man shower, and a pantry shower we can't think of anything we need that we don't have. WE. ARE. SO. BLESSED.

We were able to buy groceries last week with a gift card, and we didn't have to get the bare essentials because we had already been given basic pantry items at a shower. I'm so very grateful.

Speaking of groceries, I'd better get to work on figuring out what's for dinner this week. We're off to use another grocery gift card for this week's groceries.

Until next time,

the official Lindsey Wells...(even though Wesley still calls me Lindsey Gay sometimes...)