swim lessons are over hooray!!!!

Yesterday was the final swimming lesson and both kids passed with flying colors! I am soooooo happy. It was better this year because they had them every day for two weeks instead of one or two days a week for two months. Much better, but it seems to be such a hassle to run out to Jellystone every day for a half an hour. Somehow it seems to end up taking 2 hours by the time we are done.
We went to Jacob's first golf meeting last night too. Jake has decided that he would like to try the golf team for the middle school. He is excited and we are hoping that he does well. There are 18 kids on the team and the school supplies everything even the clubs if you want them to. We are trying to pick up the five main clubs that he will need so that he can have his own set. He practises every day each week Mon-Thurs. On the days before school starts it will be in the mornings and then after school once it starts. There's a late bus each day that will bring him home to Warrens and then we pick him up. The practises will be a lot, but then end of the golf season is October 10th so we figure we can last that long. He really wants to play and we hope he is great at it. Who knows maybe he can be a pro and support us in style in our old age.
Crantastic singers start tomorrow. That is when all the kids that want to in the area, sometimes as many as 60 from the surrounding community get together and sing about Jesus and how God loves us all. It is a great ministry. The kids practise twice a week until Cranfest and then they sing at different locations at Cranfest on Saturday. We figure that many thousands of people hear them at their outdoor concerts. What a way to teach them to tell others about what they are learning. The people at Cranfest wait for them to appear and love it. We have people that sit and wait and wait and wait in order to get good seats.
Will and the kids have been asked to be a feature act at the Old Towne Hall Variety Show that goes on all day on Saturday during Cranfest. They really do a good job singing together. I know that I will one day have to join them. I plan on it. But I have not done so thus far for three reasons.....the first is that I enjoy listening to them sing together. The second is that it is such a special time for the three of them, I hate to change it. Third, I am such a perfectionist in some ways about singing that I think I might push too hard and be too critical. It will be a fine line to walk and I do not want to take the fun out of it for them. We will see what will happen.
The new sub that they hired at work to replace me on one route so that we would have a sub for each route did not work out. In fact, I'm not sure that anything that he did do could be called work. He could not handle it at all. Mail carrying is a different type of situation that many people just cannot handle. There is an incredible amount of stress in this job that most people would never imagine existed. I cannot say that it is terrible for me that he did not work out because he was going to cost Will and I about $800 a month by working. I am sure that it will be much easier financially with him gone. Not that he lasted long.....one day. I worked today after his working yesterday and spent most of the day redelivering mail and dealing with upset customers. Not a day that I would want to repeat. You hate to see people quit, but sometimes it is just something they are not cut out to do.
We had a cook out tonight and were going to eat on the patio, but the flies were too bad. I'm sorry about that because it is great to just sit out there and watch the world. I sure enjoy that patio, but I am thinking that I am going to have to have a screened porch somewhere. I love outside, but hate the bugs. Especially our Wisconsin state bird the "mosquito".
Well time to get busy on more Cranfest stuff. Our monthly meeting is Monday night and I have another meeting with a bunch of sub committees at 5:30. Work all day on Monday for both Will and I. A good friend of ours is taking the kids to the water park at Jellystone for the day. They will be wiped out by evening.
God bless and keep in touch.