Elena 
- My son and his wife sold the restaurant they opened in 2019. They did it for a lot of reasons. They were working a lot, supplies were hard to get, and staffing was becoming a nightmare in this post-Covid era. You can read about the sale here.
My son was completely homeschooled. His wife had about two weeks of college. Yet you’ll note that their little start-up grossed $500,000 last year and received quite a bit of media attention. I’m very proud of them.
My other son, Gabe, continues to work for the new owners. He knows the kitchen, the recipes, and the workflow. The newspaper article says he’s the key to a smooth and successful transition. I am very proud of him as well.
2. Three days after the official transition, Sam and Kass left to spend a few months in Bali, Indonesia. You can follow them at junipertravelz on Instagram. They flew from Cleveland to New York (I think) and then took a 12-hour flight to Qatar. After an 8-hour layover, they boarded the plane for Bali. They are exactly 12 hours ahead of us timewise.
The plan is to relax, de-stress, and then basically vacation there for two months, although Sam is taking some cooking classes and learning some new skills. After that, they will fly back to the states and then begin an odyssey through the southern states with Sam honing his cooking skills as they go. They want to try some other business ventures as well. I’m excited to see how it turns out.
So to you homeschooling moms out there that think success in your homeschool has to be onward to college – it doesn’t. Success looks different for each individual. This is what it looks like for this son/student. And that’s okay.
3. But … it’s still hard to have your kid go off, especially because he is missing yet another family holiday – Easter 2022. The uncertainty of their future also concerns me.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Maybe it was the uncertainty of my own upbringing that makes me value roots and relationships over adventure and travel.
But that’s me. They have to find their own path. My job is to stay out of the way.
4. When the new music director at church rejected my offer to play with them again, one of the reasons was they wanted a new, “young” contemporary sound.
I think about that often as I practice excerpts from the musical, “Hamilton” that I’m learning for a local band concert that Mr. Pete and I are part of. This is one of the biggest smash hits of the theater in the past decade. The music is fun, fast, and has a lot of interesting rhythms, and I am having no trouble keeping up.
Music is music. It depends on the musician and the creativity of the director to make it sound a certain way.
I don’t think it’s a “me” problem.
5. I’m finding myself transposing and even composing some music for Easter Sunday and confirmation at the end of April.
This is not exactly my skill set, but I have had to transpose many times before. Composition is something else. I hear it in my head, and then I write it down in the key of the piece I’m working with. Hopefully, it sounds as good in person as it did in my imagination!
The piece I’m working on now is In Christ Alone. I am trying to pick parts out of the horn quartet and make it a little flutier.
We’ll see how it turns out.
6. Rosie was in a play last Sunday, Murder on the 518.
Originally, she had a very, very small part as the ticket taker in the first act. I was a little shocked by that because she auditioned early AND she felt the audition went well. After viewing the play and some of the other players, I’m still bewildered at why her part was so small.
As time went on during rehearsals, she did have another small part added to her script. She was a cook in the second act.
Then the day of the play, another girl got sick and Rosie had to learn lines to be a police officer in the last scene. She memorized her lines quickly and her last line in the play got a big laugh from the audience. See 9:13. Unfortunately, the video didn’t have her in the frame when she said it.
Hopefully, she has now proven herself as worthy of something a bit meatier as we head into senior year.
7. Looking for gluten-free pretzels for Holy Week? Stay tuned. I’m trying out a recipe I found this week. Pictures and a link to follow.