A Surprise For Nathaniel

Our son Nathaniel discovered his love of the piano a couple of years ago. Well, it wasn't actually a piano, it was a keyboard and it didn't have 88 keys, but he loved it anyway. He is obsessed with learning to play it. He has actually taught himself many songs on this little keyboard by going on YouTube to the piano teaching videos. He will sit downstairs for hours teaching himself to play and practicing what he has learned. He has been dreaming of and begging for a real piano almost constantly for that last year or so. He haunts Amazon and Ebay and any other sight that sells them.  I get emails from him about pianos and 88 key keyboards and he is constantly informing me all about the latest one he's found and how different this one is and how if we were to buy one, it would need this certain feature.  

We used to have an old upright piano, an antique actually.  This piano was in my Great Grandma's house when my family moved up there when I was in 4th grade. I took lessons and played on it and so did my sister....I will admit that she did way better than I ever did though. Anyway, when our oldest daughter was somewhere around 10 she really wanted to learn to play the piano, so my Grandpa paid to have that great big old antique piano sent to our house...over 300 miles away!

Our two oldest girls took lessons for years and practiced on that piano.  We had to get it tuned all the time and finally we were told by the piano tuner that all of the hammers needed to be replaced...basically all the inside parts...and it was going to cost close to $2,000 to have the work done! When we moved back to the other side of the state we brought it with us since we were still struggling with what we should do about the repairs it needed. How do you justify spending that much money when you could get a brand new one or a used one for that much or less? But it's an antique, I would tell myself.  How can you just throw out a piece of history...a piece of our family's history?  Well, after talking with my Mom and in much despair, we did finally have to do away with it.....my only consolation was that we would eventually get another piano.

Well, things come up and money has to be used for other things and a piano is something that can wait so we just never bought another one....until now.  Today a big surprise came rolling up our driveway. Someone that works with my husband put in an ad in their company newsletter, trying to sell their piano. My hubby, knowing how much his son was dying to have a piano of his own, made arrangements for our family to be the new owners of this little beauty:

We blindfolded Nathaniel's eyes and then at the right moment revealed the "big surprise!"  His reaction wasn't quite what I thought it would be....on the outside, that is.....on the inside I knew he was totally in shock and awe!  He tends to have the stoic type personality that his oldest sister has, emotion, what's that?  lol....  They must have inherited it from their father, because anyone that knows me will tell you I tend to be a bit excitable.  =)  Queen of the rollercoaster, yep, that's me.

Anyway.....here's his reaction:

This...

And this......

And also this......

Um....ok, not really......


It was a very heavy little piano but we put it in an ice fishing shed, pulled it around to the back of our house, down the hill and then carried it into our family room.  I would like to say that no arguments broke out as to who would try it out first and that there were no meltdowns from certain children, who shall remain nameless......in a perfect world maybe.  But I can say that these type of things only lasted a mere minutes and then all was well and everything was back to a state of normal that is normal for our house!!  ;)  Know what I'm sayin'?

Have a wonderful, music filled night.....