Mike at my work had his baby last Sunday. A little girl they named Lydia. He is taking a 2-week paternity leave which requires me to become a temporary full-time employee. I'm more than happy to help out while he and his wife adjust to having a baby in the house. We've been king of slow at work, but took on a surprise rush job that turned out to be a ginormous project. Good to have the work, but I had my 40 hours in by Friday morning already!

Paige considered auditioning for the local community theatre's production of A Christmas Carole last Monday, but when the audition required a 3-minute singing solo with sheet music, it seemed a bit beyond what she was anticipating.

Abby was in town on Thursday with her art class from UWL to tour a couple art museums. She had a lengthy lunch break and called me at work to have lunch with her. We dined at the Public Market. It was good to see her again. Bryn had a cross country meet Thursday, but didn't run. She's been having some tendonitis issues in her achilles and with the conference meet next Saturday (17th), the coaches advised her not to chance it. So I didn't drive to watch this week.

Friday Jeff got picked up by 7:30am for his annual hunting expedition to Waubeno with his college friends. One friend wasn't able to go because it's too close to his wife's due date - and here we are sending ours off to college! Jeff got back by supper tonight and said he had a really great time. I'm glad the guys have kept the tradition up all these years.

I worked Friday morning, then went off to Carroll (my alma mater) in the afternoon for a new Alumni Networking event. The students were encouraged to attend and ask us alumni what we did with our degrees from Carroll and what words of encouragement we could offer them. Boy, did I meet the most enthusiastic and interesting art majors! It was so worth it for me to go and get re-energized! I do so much better talking one-on-one vs. presentations. I ended up going to the Y on Friday night because my increased work hours kept me from going during the week. Then Paige and I just hung out while Bryn went off to a bon fire with friends.

Saturday I got a lot of errands done: grocery shop, drop a ton of old computer stuff at the high school band's recycling fundraiser, drycleaners... Bryn worked all day. And Paige was planning her date.... New boy. I drove them up to the movies just before 6:00pm, and when I didn't hear anything by 9:00pm I started texting. Little did I know that they decided to see a 2nd movie. At 11:30pm, the boy's mother and I met in the theatre parking lot knowing we needed to put some stricter ground rules for dating in place after tonight. Paige ended up losing her cell phone at the theatre, so that's been a huge punishment in itself.

I thought the oven died yesterday. I broiled some chicken legs, then was going to slow cook them for a couple hours. The broiling went fine, but there was no heat after that. Overnight I figured out to check the circuit breaker, but that didn't seem to help. Of course, when Jeff came home he magically flipped the same switch and the oven came back to life. Go figure. It'll never die. I finally got around to scrapbooking Bella's 3-year page. I try to do it for her birthday, but that was almost 6 months ago! Better late than never I guess.