So I'm finally done with college! My pinning ceremony was yesterday.  Time does really seem to be flying.  Is that a sign that I'm older than I was? I remember how slow first grade went by. Now I wonder how yesterday is already a week past. (Maybe that sentence doesn't make any sense.)  I just want to say I feel extremely thankful for family and friends who held me up the last couple of years.  I really like you guys. :) After pinning, we had a family reunion at Grandmother's house.  It was really special to all sit around the living room and play pictionary and chat. Of course, the food was awesome too. Grandmother is pretty much top notch in many ways, and cooking is one of them.  Today I woke up to beautiful ice clinging to everything.  I love the way trees look with ice.  Thankfully, it seemed like the ice didn't do much damage in our area.  After church, our household plus Micah and Krista had our stocking opening Christmas thing.  It was really fun! My housemates gave me an EMU sweatshirt for graduation (I've been too cheap to buy one.)  I felt really special and loved.  After the gift giving we stimulated our minds with a Mr Bean movie.  Humph. Not so stimulating, but funny anyway.  To top off a very big weekend for me, we had our church Christmas play tonight.  It was called "The Gift Is Given".  I was the "musician" for it.  Doing plays is a lot of fun and also a lot of work.  It will be nice not to have all the practices.  One of the most fun things about the play for me was learning how to use the keyboard at church. It has all kinds of sweet features that I have never taken time to learn.  I could still spend hours learning other features that I haven't checked out yet.  I really need to buy a keyboard for myself so that I have a nice one to use with Three n One.  I've looked around...but nice ones are expensive...and I don't want a cheap one.  So, I will have patience/patients in the waiting.  But even though I need a keyboard, I always enjoy the feel and sound of a real piano any day.

That's the ramblings tonight. I'm tired. Hope ya'll feel loved and blessed and happy.  God is good. Mel

So I know I'm not so faithful at writing on here, but I probably do better here than on email! Yikes! Writing to people has never been a big strong point of mine.  But here I am. Life has been happy for me lately.  I love my job--working at an adult day care center.  The staff and participants are wonderful and entertaining.  I'm taking a
Spanish class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and the teacher is great.  I just don't like the time of the class.  Oh well. My brother is getting married in 18 days.  I'm excited about that.  I even get to wear a green dress and be a bridesmaid! Yippy!  Another plus about the wedding is that I will get to see my sister Kendra.  It seems like forever since I've seen her.  Last year about this time we sisters took a quick, fun trip out to Washington State.  We had all sorts of adventures--the most memorable were the sleeping arrangements. One night we camped in a tent in the front yard of a trailer that was part of a trailer park.  To say the least, it was definitely an odd situation that made us a little wary.  Another night we slept in a hotel that looked like it had been ritzy way back in the good old days.  Now it isoutdated and a little run down. And no airconditioner.  I got so hot during the night that I went crazy.  Have you ever gotten so hot that you just went frantic?  That was definitely me.  I splashed water around, turned upside down in my bed.  Stood up on the bed to try to feel an air vent, laid out on the little deck, and moved about every 2 minutes.  It was aweful.  But the cool thing is, stuff like that makes for good memories.  I would do it again in a heartbeat! So anyway.  This seems like a boring report to me so I'm going to stop right now before I really go downhill.  Blessings!