I'm baaaaaack....

I know it has been over four months since I last posted anything but I am still here (you can see me as I photographed Lake Michigan at the end of June). Everyone's life has their share of chaos and here are just a few of the chaotic happenings in my life since I last posted:

• My hard drive crashed (I just had it replace after Thanksgiving last year and at the time I didn't remember that I had purchased the extended warranty) and it took 5 weeks before I received my computer back from the service center (because they had to send it in 3 times to get it operational...but hey, I now have a new motherboard and hard drive).
• Our basement flooded, dried out, had the carpet cleaned, flooded again, dried out, had the carpet cleaned AGAIN, FLOODED AGAIN, carpet and padding was ripped out where the water was seeping up in the center of the basement. The water table kept getting too high and even though the sump pump kept up with the perimeter, water seeped up through a couple of cracks in the foundation.
• The school year ended and my oldest son "graduated" from elementary school. He starts 6th grade at the middle school on Tuesday.
• baseball, Baseball, and more BASEBALL! Number one son played in the majors and number two son played coach pitch and I was team parent for both teams. Then our season was extended by five weeks with tournaments since number one son made the 11-year old all-star team.
• We celebrated my parents 60th wedding anniversary with a family weekend in Sheboygan (which is when I took the above picture).
• A very long house project that included new siding and paint removal from the brickwork in the front (and subsequent tuckpointing because a lot of mortar came out during the powerwashing).

Wow, I'm exhausted just reading about all that again. I am looking forward to school starting on Tuesday so that I can get back in my studio and find some time for my art (something that I have been in dire need of). So hopefully I will have some new artwork to post about soon.