It’s funny that this is the challenge to day because I was just thinking about this. At church we talked about letting our talents shine and not burying them.  Obviously we are all blessed with some sort of talent. Some of us have “talent show” talents that can be displayed. And others have talents that are part of our personality or a characteristic trait. My husband is abundantly blessed in both areas. He plays the piano BEA.U.TI.FULLY by EAR. Seriously- it’s ridiculous. Check him out HERE. If he’s heard the song, he can play it. It’s awesome and disgusting at the same time. haha  Plus he’s naturally a great police officer (Officer of the Year 2010 suckas!), smart, giving, great conversationalist…

I don’t have any “talent show” talents. In fact, I hated talent shows growing up. I don’t sing. I don’t dance. I don’t recite poetry. lol I played sports growing up and was a natural athlete, so sports were fun. I’m witty and use my humor to lighten the mood and be a peacemaker. Those are things that come naturally. I’ve had interests in different things, but never had the patience to stick with them long enough to become good at it. But about 8 years ago I found myself watching a “Signing Time” video that my sister gave me to use with my kiddos. I watched it and fell in love with American Sign Language. I bought tons of the videos and worked with Isabel and Taj who were my 2 youngest. I started with Taj when he was over year and he picked up signs quickly. With Livie I started at just a few months old. I’ve talked about ASL a lot on my blog and Rachel Coleman (Creator of “Signing Time”) even commented on this post!! I was stoked!!) Anyway, I’m rambling… My point is that I fell in love with ASL and over the years I have studied it on my own, renting videos and books from the library, and FINALLY took a REAL ASL class in college in the Spring. I love it. I’m NOT fluent- not even close. But I have that desire to be fluent some day. So, for now ASL is a hobby, not a talent. But I feel that it could be a talent and I am taking the time to develop it. Not only that, my oldest sons are both taking ASL in high school so we are able to learn together.

Here’s my video story from my ASL 1 class. I made an A+. Make sure you turn on the annotations so you know what I’m saying…

 

 

My mom plays the piano really well. Her mom, my grandma, always told her if she played the piano she would be popular at parties. When I was younger- like 6 or 7- my parents signed me up to take piano lessons. I think it was more because my older sister was taking lessons so I took lessons too. Much like gymnastics- my older sister took gymnastics so I did too- but was obviously too young to do anything more than somersaults. Anyway… getting off the subject. I took piano lessons and hated it about 96% of the time. I wanted to be able to play without the hard work. I was told you had to work hard to play well which now I know it’s a load of crap if you’re blessed with a gift like my husband who can literally hear a song on the radio and walk over to the piano and play it beautifully by ear. Yeah- he sucks. (But go buy his cd…) Anyway… wasn’t digging all the practicing and quite frankly I never saw myself as a piano player although an electric keyboard may have made me like it more. So, a couple of years into it I quit. I guess I will never be “popular at parties.”  Bummer. It’s ok though because I heard my mom tell others that she knew that my brother and younger sister had “IT”- the gift of music- and that I didn’t. No worries- it didn’t hurt my feeling because I kinda already knew this because a couple of years after quitting piano I tried the guitar. That lasted approximately 2 months. You know why? Because I had an accoustic guitar and I thought that was so uncool. I wanted an electric. Hey- I was in 5th grade, what do you expect? That fact that I didn’t have an electric guitar wasn’t the only reason. I just don’t have the patience to suck. I just wanna be good. Period. And I wasn’t. Period.

So, here I am, 33 years old and I still can’t play a musical instrument. I don’t play the trumpet, the acordian, the sax… nada. My dream instrument would be to play the drums. I wanna be Watts from “Some Kind of Wonderful.”  Or maybe just hook up with a drummer. Well, not NOW obviously… I love my hot man. But back in the day a drummer would’ve been awesome- Tommy Lee,  Matt Sorum, “How you doin’?” Lars Ulrich… um, yuck.  But now I am waaaaaaaaaay off the subject. Basically this big, long post is to say I can’t play a musical instrument, wish I could and if I did it’d be the drums. Or a drum-mer.

Do you play a musical instrument? If so, what? Or if no, do you wish you played one in particular?