Piano Recital

Today Ammon did what only one or two of you have ever done -- he played a piano solo in his first (and probably last) piano recital. We weren't sure he was going to pull it off early in the morning when he practiced because he burst into tears and got a little mad at us because we were making him go through the song a couple of times. I wasn't sure his wheelchair would fit under the piano keyboard so we went over to the church early to practice. Once we got there, he wasn't nervous at all. They decided to have Ammon go first. When his teacher got up to announce the program, he said, "We'll start off with Ammon Clark first." Ammon pumped his fist in the air and said, "Yeah!!!" He went up and began to play -- made a mistake in the middle and outloud said, "Oh dang!" but he corrected it and finished the simple little piece. I was so proud of him. It has taken about 8 months for him to learn a very simple tune, and he has real difficulty in reading the notes and translating that to the keys on the piano. But he keeps trying. His handwriting has really improved due to the piano because it has given his fingers a lot more strength. I don't know if he will continue to play the piano because his teacher was a BYU graduate and he just got accepted into grad school at USC. He will not be teaching here any longer. We'll have to see if we can find another teacher that was as patient as this one was.
Yeah for Ammon!