Stuff

Where was I?  Oh yes, it was Alison's birthday the last time I posted, which was more than two weeks ago.  Life is just getting in the way of blogging, and that's okay, because it's in the right order.  :D  We said goodbye to my parents Wednesday morning after a quick and wonderful visit, and I had just enough time to change the sheets before the PlainJanes arrive!  We are waiting for them as we speak.  I already warned Jane that I do not "do" dusting.  Not regularly.  The dust lives here.  It is part of the furniture.  I hope the PlainJane girls are not expecting perfectly clean accommodations!  We live here, after all, and there are people coming and going all the time, now that this address has turned into a music studio.  Can I blame it on the music studio?  I didn't have anyone else to blame it on before this.

I missed posting a Happy Birthday to Emily last  Sunday.  She turned seven, and she got everything that was on her birthday wish list, except for an mp3 player and a digital camera.  She was very pleased to get canned peaches, dried mangoes and apricots, and yes, brussel sprouts, along with some Hot Wheels, Sculpey clay, and a "watch that lights up".  This is her reaction to unwrapping a nice book of teddy bear paper dolls that I found at the Salvation Army for 25¢, complete and unused.

Perhaps the best gift of all was when her grandparents accepted Emily's invitation to come for her birthday.  I told Emily that her grandparents were not going to come this year because such and such and blah blah blah, but she persisted.  Fine.  Invite them, I said.  So she emailed the grands, and to my amazement, they made a liar out of me!  I was very happy to have them!

Alison has picked up five more violin students.  Who needs high school anyway?  She now has a cottage industry.  There is so much to learn when you provide a service.  One of them is how to deal gracefully with a chronically late student, when that student is the last one of the day.  Another one is when parents drop their kids off and then forget about them.

We have three girls in 4-H this year, something that is new to us.  With all the forms and books and projects it is very confusing, but we'll get it.  Emily is the easy one, being in CloverKids.  I don't have any books to fill out for her.  She is doing sewing and leathercraft.  Elisabeth is doing leathercraft also, as well as  "auditing"  digital photography.  And Amy is doing photography, as you well know.  She was unofficially voted club historian and agreed to split the job with a younger girl who was very disappointed not to be an officer last year.  :)  Our schedule has just picked up, as well as our gas bill.  We will have a lot of running back and forth.  But it's a good bunch of kids, and this will be a good creative outlet for our girls.  The academics might have to take a back seat.

Goals for the rest of the day: Make a delivery, stop at the store, figure out what's for supper, finish up my Sunday School lesson, bake cookies, and oh!  Yes!   FINISH THE CHURCH LADIES' NEWSLETTER!!!!  That should have been first on the list.  What have I been doing???  After all that, we'll greet the PlainJanes!! :D  Must go.