Poor Alyx. Xander is a cuddler. And can sleep in any position apparently.

Iris was batting around an empty snail shell so cutely.

Zane and Emma (who turns out to be male so is now named Erik after Emma Trevelyan’s twin…ahem.)

This would be a great family photo if mama cat’s tail weren’t hiding the fifth kitten.

SO HANDSOME

SO FLOOF

Closer to a happy family photo

They love playing in these wreaths that Mom has sitting on the patio for whatever reason

Zane was more vocal this weekend than usual!

There’s the happy family photo!…oh wait, someone’s heading off stage right…

June
Journals: I’m following the topic list here

June 2: Something good from last week

If last week can include “the past 7 days” and not “the
Sunday through Saturday prior to this one,” that something was the last three
days of school. Final exams, yes, but also final moments with a great group of
students. My Latin 1 class used the time to read ahead in the textbook and
translate the chapters we hadn’t had time to go over fully, with me just
glossing over any new grammar for them so they could just get through the
story, and they have progressed so far in their reading skills, I was so proud
of them! Also on the last day we celebrated the end of the school year in song.
Latin songs. Translated from English songs. There’s nothing quite like belting
out the Latin version of Old MacDonald Had a Farm when one’s finals are all
finished.

If I am technically obliged to refer to May 22-28 for this
post, that something was visiting my parents and their KITTENS! So here are some
gratuitous kitten photos to accompany this journal entry. Because gratuitous
kitten photos never really need an excuse, do they? Oh, and also on Sunday we
had a mini family reunion for Memorial Weekend since my uncle, who is also a
pastor, was the guest speaker in church Sunday morning and then we got to spend
the rest of Sunday with him and my cousins and their kids, who play really well
with my sister’s kids. It was a lovely, long weekend all around.

June
Journals: I’m following the topic list here

I’m starting this a couple of days late so here we go with
the first three prompts! (In three separate posts, I think. This one got longish.)

June 1: A step you have taken toward your goals

Pictured: Goals, on
the right. Steps, on the left.

A few weeks ago a lady at church mentioned a friend who was
moving and looking to sell a piano. Now my mother is a pianist (our church
pianist, as pastor’s wives often are) so I grew up with a piano in the home to
play with (and Mom was surprisingly tolerant about young hands pounding out
tuneless cacophony on her precious keys, as long as said hands weren’t sticky).
My sister and I had piano lessons for a while as kids, but then in middle
school we got to pick band instruments and I pursued the flute without much
time devoted to practicing piano any more. I played the flute in marching/pep/concert
band all through college as well as my last two years of high school and I
still play it in the church worship team. But when this lady asked us to spread
the word about the piano, I felt the itch to start playing again (and it was
going surprisingly cheap for what has turned out to be a decent piano even
though I still need to get it tuned after having it moved to my apartment).

Long story short, since I think I just spoiled the ending in
the parentheses anyway, we bought the piano and now it lives in my living room.
But it has been years since I practiced so at first I would sit down and just
sort of randomly hit keys and attempt to remember chords, with much less
cacophony than young me, but also without much actual music resulting. I went
online looking for sheet music to practice with and ended up with the Dragon
Age Inquisition theme (excellent goal, right?), which turned out to be a bit beyond me at this point. (In short:
I play flute so I read the treble staff quite well thank you, but what is this
bass staff thing again? what note is on what line? wow I need a refresher for
the left hand half of this thing.) So that’s the goal; the step I’ve taken is
the decades-old lesson book on the left of the picture. Mom dug out some of her
old books for me; I bypassed the kids’ books we’d actually used for piano
lessons and picked out this book that Dad intended to learn from, back when they
were fresh out of Bible college, pastoring their first church, poor as church
mice, and had just bought an old upright for Mom to practice on. (Fun story: It
was in the basement of an old store or something and Dad needed help moving it
up the stairs. The only people he could find that time of day were the dudes
hanging out in the local tavern so he rounded up a bunch of them to carry this
piano with him, and then one of them lost hold and the piano went twanging down
the stairs again…) I don’t think Dad ever actually used the book, but the
chords I once knew are coming back to me pretty well as I work through it, so.
Progress!