Miscellaneous grown up stuff

We have a new babysitter who is awesome! She was here last night with Claudia and Jordan (although not *technically* Claudia's babysitter on account of Claudia's 12) so Jamie and I could go out for our anniversary. We had super fun! and ended the evening at the bookstore where we bought The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder so we can read about the start of Laura's marriage.

Several months ago I was telling Beverly it seemed like we could never find any time to volunteer, paint, write, play music, or read. But that phase seems to have come to an end and things really seem to be jelling around here all of a sudden. Well, not all of a sudden--we've worked our asses off for it for almost a year, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

So life is full in a very good way.

As for me, I've been working in a contract position since October and as of next week, I'll be a permanent employee and with a raise and vacation time and paid holidays!

And in addition to all the volunteer stuff we're doing, that I'm so happy about, I joined a book group and I'm really excited about it because they've been described as people who love to read who are very opinionated. That's just going to be so fun!

And finally, I'm back to playing my clarinet and I'm thinking about auditioning for some amateur symphonies/bands in this area. I've been going through new sheet music like mad and this weekend I bought Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and it's very hard but I'm having a blast with it. I'm sure our neighbors love us.

Jamie's joined a guitar circle, and is gearing up to start painting and writing again. I can't wait to see what he does! I miss reading him a lot. Also, he's planning on having some of his art up somewhere in the area by this fall and sending out some query letters to publishers pretty soon on some stuff he wrote a while back.