So many exciting things have happened in my life that I am not sure where to begin.  I guess childhood.  In second grade I was in a spelling bee.  My word was “pants”.  I repeated the word but pronounced it as “paints”.  My teacher corrected me and told me the word was pants and not paints.  I spelled it correctly, but I remember that was the first time I realized that I had an accent and would try my hardest to pronounce words correctly after that.  The beginning of my unending quest to lose my accent.

In eighth grade I was voted to be on the junior varsity cheerleading squad.  My parents were horrified.  I was thrilled to oblivion.  I had four years of cheering in high school and two years in college and they were some of the best times of my life.

I met my husband and he certainly changed my life.  He took me on our honeymoon to Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin which is one of my very favorite places in the world.  We swam in a crystal clean lake and lay in the sun on these humungous rocks by the shore.  I got one of the worst sun burns in my life, which didn’t help the honeymoon, but we had a great time.

Years later he would convince me to take Scuba Diving in my college classes.  Never in my dreams would I have believed that I would scuba dive.  I wouldn’t have passed the physics had it not been for him.  I had to miss my checkout dive as I had just found out that I was pregnant.

The next year I did pass my checkout dive and we dove all over Ohio in various quarries and had such a wonderful time.  He took me to Jamaica for our twentieth anniversary and we snorkeled in the Caribbean.  In later years, we did scuba dive the Caribbean several times.

When Jess was in junior high she became obsessed with hot air balloons.  She and her dad made a model of a balloon and she did her science project on hot air balloons.  That summer we were invited to the local hot air balloon rally and we got to crew for one of the entrants.

Some years later, one of my girlfriends married a gentleman from Holland who had a hot air balloon and we crewed for him.  I have ridden in a hot air balloon more times than I can remember.  Being afraid of heights, the first ride with Jess along, was pretty scary but Jess was so excited that I had to calm down.  I hunkered in the balloon basket until we set off and then I stood, looked down and fell in love.

A lot of our close friends were musicians.  The hubster picked his guitar back up and started to relearn to play.  I sang harmony with some of the singers and we had such fun on our deck playing music.  We had parties and would stay up all night.  We would do a song and then someone would say, “just one more.”  We saw the sun rise many of those nights.

The group formed a band and called ourselves, “Front Porch Jam.” We practiced in our garage and all of our neighbors would set up lounge chairs in the driveways and listen to us play.  In 1999, the band performed on stage at “On the Waterfront” in Rockford, Illinois in front of a huge crowd.  It was the happiest day of my life.

I also had two of the best children who grew up to be wonderful adults.  Addi read the play in Kindergarten and we were so proud of her. She was also Salutatorian of her high school class. Jess won the “Young Authors” contest at her elementary school one year.  They were both just outstanding people.

And now I have a grandchild.  I never imagined that I would become a grandmother.  He is adorable, beautiful and so sweet.  He lives very far away but I plan to visit, and they are coming for a week in June.  Now that is exciting!

Peace be with you.