Many things to tell!

Hello to our faithful readers from your not so faithful bloggers!

We have been meaning to write a blog for a while but, SURPRISE!, we haven't gotten around to it until now! Lots has been going on lately. We finished off the school year with a bang. We're still teaching over the summer but much fewer students: I have 2 so far and RA has around 10. One of the big exciting pieces of news: RUTH ANN IS MAKING BASSOON REEDS!!! I taught her how and she has made her first reed. I'm very proud to say that it makes a sound! It doesn't play very well, but that is because I didn't give her a very good piece of cane to start with. Here is a picture of the lovely reed.



Now, my plan is to teach her how to make all my reeds so I don't have to anymore!!!! Every Double Reed player's dream!









Juliana turned 2 last week. We had the exhausting fun of going to the birthday party. Here is the birthday girl in her birthday splendor:





There were lots of her friends from across the street. Eric grilled hot dogs and everyone had a lot of fun. I learned that Skittles, birthday cake, and bratwurst don't mix so well in one's stomache.








Our latest excitement was a trip to Santa Fe! Ruth Ann had an audition there and I thought I had better go along and take care of her :b. Ruth Ann advanced to finals but alas, they gave the job to the local sub. BUT she is on the sub list so we're hoping she'll get to play with them sometime. When that happens, I think I may need to go along to make sure everything is alright! We liked Santa Fe so much that we didn't want to leave! RA's aunt and uncle let us stay at their place. The took us to all the haunts and restaraunts. We had some of the best Tex-Mex food ever. On Sunday we went to Bandelier N.P. There are numerous Anasazi ruins and some of the ancient cliff dwellings.






There was one dwelling that we had to climb 140 feet to get to! We were comforted by the fact that many thousands of Indians went before us....





Despite RA having to 'work' on our little vacation, she and I both had a fabulous time and feel very rested. Even though we'd rather still be there.

~Mike