Surviving..

Well, we are more than half-way finished with our long 2 weeks apart. I was able to see Joel

briefly Saturday night, Sunday night and part of Monday morning, so that helped.. Last week, the guys were encouraged by an awesome Comeback Concert in Madison Co., GA. Joel explained it as, "it was amazing, the crowd was excited at the right times, cheered at the right times, the presentation was one of the best we have done, and I could tell the students were really excited to be there." Also, we had some great Concerts at Eastwood, OH 2/1/10 (this week), Van Wert, OH, and Southmont, IN which were both earlier in January. Here is a pic from Eastwood this week. Next time I blog I promise to share a couple of student quotes with you from our evening Concerts, they are so uplifting and remind us why we do what we do.

Little Joel is going through a rough time lately. His attachment symptoms have increased drastically the past week or so and I can't help thinking that it might be because I have had to get lots of sitters and Joel has not been home. Sometimes when I just leave the room and he cannot see me his whole face turns red and he stops breathing for like 5 seconds because he thinks I'm gone and will never return (I guess?).However, I know that this age is usually the worst

of it, and I am hoping it will get better soon. We were all in Cincy this past weekend as I had a 2-day meet to judge, so of course, Gamma and PaPa had to throw a Birthday celebration for Joel and for his cousin Indy who turned 2 on Jan 23rd. Joel had an extremely fun time consuming his first ice cream cone and you can see a video of it here: http://blip.tv/file/3167762

Also we opened some more presents and one resulted in some seated dancing by Joel which was kinda cute, here is the video of that: http://blip.tv/file/3167684