HELLLLOOOOO EVERYONE!! If anyone has been checking for updates and has been disappointed that I haven't kept you up to date...I am so sorry!!
Here I am....August 31st. The girls are a week into a new school year, Kourtney a Junior in high school and Emily a 7th grader. It has been a VERY busy and semi-complicated summer to say the least.
The big relief is that Nick and I have job security in unsure economic times. You may have heard the President mention Geisinger Health System in the news as an industry model, so you can guess my job security has been renewed. As for Nick the industrial grade carpet manufacturing business is as stable as ever, thank goodness for business men who still beleive in American made.
The greatest accomplishment of the year so far has been my successful completion of an Associates degree in Business Administration from Penn State University. I am now a proud Alumni member! As I sit here, I now look toward the next goal I has set for myself to complete my bachelors of Art Studio that I started 20 years ago. I have 6 classes until it is complete, and the first one is scheduled just two days from now. Once I've finished those classes, I then will look forward to entering the Master's program at Bloomsburg University for Instructional Technology. This field is growing and seems to incorporate all the things I am most passionate about work, process improvement, instruction, design and information technology. I may not finish until I am 45 but it should be worth it in the end.
That's the short of it, now for the rest of the story....
The entire has revolved around softball. in March I was nominated and elected to be president of our local ASA (the Danville Bandits Softball Association) softball organization. This organization started two years ago with two teams and now is looking at 5 teams of 13 girls each. We are non-profit and consist of approximately 120 members and a board of about 12. It has been a time consuming feat to develop the bylaws, code of conduct, attend numerous tournaments (two days of non-stop softball games on the weekend) for both girls and manage to please a whole lot of people most of the time.
I don't feel like we had much of a summer since Emily made it to All Stars for Little League, and if anyone has the TV on today, they can see the Little League World Series happening in our backyard of Williamsport, PA. We made a trip earlier this week to watch some games, collect pins and enjoy the experience of something so big in our rural state. Anyway, Emily had two weekends of of tournament playoffs and her team won the district and sectional playoffs but lost at the western state championship playoffs. I won't go into details about it, but I can tell you that the team we won against in the western playoffs is the team that won at the State level. Although we did not get to the State level, it was just as well because the girls were getting a little tired of softball at that point anyway, although all the softball was making them pretty darn good players. Just two weeks ago, we hosted our own tournament in Danville and raised a pretty penny for our organization and once again our girls performed flawlessly. Emily even won the pickle award for getting into a pickle twice while attempting to make it home to score.
Kourtney has had a successful softball season as well, although her success doesn't come from the remarkable plays she makes as much as the fact that she has made it one year from surgery on her knee and can safely say that her knee is as good as it was before surgery with a minor ache now and again. Kourtney's bigger new is also that she became a legal and licenced driver on August 3rd. We are very proud of her accomplishment and are thrilled that she is getting to experience a new found independence. Emily is enjoying a sister that can run her places too. I am proud of the fact that I managed to get over my excessive anxiety about letting my little girl go.
