Grab Bag

Here's a hodgepodge of updates:

Contacts
Elijah's still just as lazy with his contacts as he ever was with his glasses.  He'll wear them 3 or 4 days out of the week and think he should get some pat on the back for that.  This INFURIATES me.  For two reasons: 1 - We just paid $400 for him to get a year's supply of contacts HE'S NOT CONSISTENTLY WEARING!  2 - Without wearing them consistently, they probably won't even help reduce his up-and-coming vision loss.

Grumble grumble.

Viola
Miciah has been practicing her little heart out and her improvement from December (when she started private lessons with the lovely Kate) to now has been phenomenal.  Props to Kate, but mostly props to Miciah who works harder at the things she wants than most people I know.

Last weekend was her Solo and Ensemble competition and she rocked it out!  It's a 5 point scale, with 1 being the best and 5 being the worst.  She was in a quartet (2 violins, viola, and bass (instead of the usual cello - her best friend plays bass) and they got a 1. She was in a viola trio, which is an unusual combination, but turned out to be really fun to listen to!  They got a 1 as well.  And despite "really messing up" in the middle of her song (you could only tell by the face that she made.  She kept going like a pro and it sounded fine to me), she got a 1 on her solo, too!  She was quite pleased.

I am starting to really look forward to her upcoming years of viola practicing and performing.  She's past the stage where practice makes you think, "Find a happy place, find a happy place," and now I'm ready to start calling for after dinner entertainment!

Exploring
Elijah has been calling for us to "buy some property."  Like he knows exactly how we should spend our next 30 - 50,000 dollars.  Ha!  We simultaneously entertained a few ideas: 1 - Move altogether, to a house with more land.  2 - Stay where we are and buy a piece of property about an hour out from the city.  3 - Just stay where we are and NOT buy some property.  After about a week of tinkering with these ideas, it suddenly dawned on me, "Wait a minute.  This is MY money!"  And I decided to do what I wanted to do, which is not move at all.  The end.

But at the same time I started thinking about why it was that Elijah was calling so adamantly for this piece of property (other than the fact that Elijah is adamant about everything).  I thought back on how I spent my time at his age, and I practically LIVED in the woods!  But we didn't own those woods.  They were just around my house.

So I approached Elijah and said, "Hey, I think you really just want to go exploring in the woods.  So go do it!  You're ready to leave our tiny property and find a place of your own without parents hovering over you.  I'm in full support!"  "But we don't own the woods around our house."  "So?"  We pulled up google earth and I showed him all the woods around our house that you don't really see from the road.  It's actually quite a bit.  As the resident expert (Rob NEVER did this growing up), I gave him my extensive wisdom on this topic, discussed strategies, and laid some ground rules, all the while calming a Rob who was trying hard to not freak out by the new freedoms I was adding into Elijah's life.  "He'll need to take a cell phone with him."  "Absolutely not."  "Fine.  At least a watch."  "Nope.  You get really good at knowing the time by watching the sun."  "grumble grumble"  "It'll be good.  You'll see."

So far, we have more fossils than will fit on our porch, ripped jeans, holes in shirts, and lots and lots of grass-stained, muddy clothes to wash.  Perfect.

...
Other than that, life is moving along.  My semester of interpreting is nearing an end.  Last week of insanity!  Then it'll be relatively calm all summer, and I'm looking forward to that.  Gardening and traveling up ahead!  Rob is enjoying a pretty successful year so far in his job, which is great cause he's worked really hard for it.  Not that you always get what you want when you work hard, but, you know, it's nice when hard work does actually pay off.  We're happy and healthy and spiritually connected to the world around us, and what more can one ask for?!