Meditation experience

I've been trying to meditate at home for awhile, and just haven't seemed to fall into it. There is usually some noise going on in my house (my mom teaches piano lessons) so it's hard to focus. My father also likes to come knock on my door at any time, so I get interrupted frequently.

Being a classical musician, I am frequently in a very focused state of mind for hours a day: practicing. I think it's almost meditative, in a way, because you are focused so minutely on details, and it's hard to think of other things. I regularly practice in the sanctuary of the church where I grew up, so I thought perhaps I'd bled enough energy into that area to be able to fall into actual meditation.

Yesterday, I sat up by the altar, a few feet away from where I generally set up to practice. I tried the meditation exercise from week one, which was basically just focusing on your breathing, and opening a connection to God. I really got into it this time. I finally feel like I got something out of my meditation, because I could actually still my mind and not get so distracted. I still had thoughts that flitted through my head, but I was able to simply wave at them as they passed by, rather than start to dwell on them.

I'm hoping I can transfer this experience to my home, and hopefully move along in this part of the course. Now that I seem to have had success, however, I think it will be easier to recreate the situation. I spend much more of my time in my room than I do practicing, but I don't focus on anything so hard here as I do when I'm practicing at church, so maybe it's just an energy thing. We'll see!

Something I struggle with is what to do with my eyes. I close them, but in the past, I've found that I have a tendency to drift off to sleep if I meditate with my eyes closed. I do deep breathing exercises sometimes to fall asleep, and I find that when I meditate, I fall into the deep breathing habits. Being a brass player, it's really easy to fall into that kind of breathing, since I spend so much time doing it! If I open my eyes, however, I don't know what to look at, and find my eyes wandering, which makes my mind wander even more. I'm not entirely sure how to focus my mind on just my breathing, without constantly thinking "in, out" and then I wouldn't be able to hear anything else anyone might be trying to tell me.

I'm up for advice...