New baby in the house!!

Well, as you can see, it's a baby grand (the only kind of new baby in my horizon, Lord willing!). Baby girl has been using this keyboard for her last three years of piano and, according to her teacher, she had long ago reached the point where her piano fingers were not getting any stronger because the weight of a keyboard key was not enough.

So we started the hunt for an upgrade. You would think, an upright piano should be next, and normally it would, but, with our new home, we have this lonely corner of the living room that we were wondering what to fill it with. An upright would, unfortunately, cover the window there. So, since eventually, provided our concertina keeps doing so well, we would be wanting to end with a baby grand anyway, we figured we could bite the bullet and just skip a step and go straight for the baby grand. And yes, biting the bullet does include more variations on PB&J and tuna casserole fare for a while, and delaying our trip to Brazil for later in the year :) but hey, those are the things we do for our kids, right?! Here's hoping they remember that when it comes time to pick our retirement home...

And, no, we have not forgotten our boy. Earlier this year, he also graduated to a full size guitar, and, praise the good Lord, that did not affect our budget as badly as the baby grand did just now. He is doing well with the guitar also, but is not so keen on practicing. He could improve so much more if somehow we could impress upon him that he will only play like a rock and roll star if he invests the practice time needed. Oh, well. We'll keep trying.

Summer is here, and although it did get to 94 degrees earlier in the week (we went swimming at a friend's house), we're now back to low 80's and very sunny (I hope Keith reads this!). Our garden is providing us with a bounty of strawberries which is making me dig into the recipe books for all sorts of strawberry shortcake concoctions and such. Pretty soon our tomatoes should be ready along with the rest of the garden we got going (basil, corn, squash, peppers, green beans, cilantro, onions, carrots, etc). I really want to encourage you to start your own garden. It's such a great pleasure to be able to get things from your very own, 100% organic garden, and make some meal for your family with it! Start small, with herbs, tomatoes and such, so that you can get at least a salad going. Pretty soon you'll be very motivated to add more stuff to your own little piece of paradise. It's awesome!

The kids were out of school mid June, and the very next week they started the summer program at school which consists of Monday-Thursday classes that revolve around fun ways to learn new things. It's only from 8:30-11:30, but it's just right to keep them busy enough, specially on the days I teach Jazzercise. They are taking a Card game class, which, despite the name, is not designed to turn them into gamblers anonymous, but to show them different ways to use math. They also have a cooking class, and some of the stuff they make is pretty good. Our boy came home with the book and insisted on having us make this watermelon smoothie before they even did it in class. It turned out very yummy! Then there's also a cartoon class and a team building class. Come July we'll be getting different classes, just to keep them interested.

Time to go. Stay in touch!