Greetings!

     Hi! It's been a while, hasn't it? My sister-in-law, Sarah, mentioned my blog at Easter and it made me really happy to know that there's at least 1 person who occasionally reads this. Ha. Well.I've been busy since the end of January, especially with some letter writing projects, so I'll give a little update and hopefully blog more regularly.

        This February I participated in 2 letter writing events. Lettermo and InCoWriMo. Both events challenge the participant to write a letter (or more) every day of February. I was super behind with my penpalling so this caught me up and allowed me to write to a few new people. I had participated in Lettermo for a few years so it was delightful to reconnect with old friends. I like Lettermo because you create a profile and you can read through to find people you might connect with before you write. This was my first year doing InCoWriMo, where there is a list of random letter writers all over the world and you pick who you'd like to write to. I chose my recipients kind of randomly. I had each boy choose a few people I sent mail to and then I chose the rest based on location. It is warned that you might not receive any mail since the chances of someone randomly choosing you from the list could be pretty slim, but I got a lot of great letters. Some of the people I wrote too responded as well. In general, I get along well with letter-writers. They're my type of people.Letter writing has connected me with many friends that I may not have naturally connected with if I had encountered them in everyday life. I'm constantly learning and building friendships.
      March was filled with music festivals. It was so cool to watch both my students and my oldest son growing as musicians. My son and 2 of my students even got solos. I worked with a chorus of 100 boys from grades 6-9 from 65 different communities. It was a wonderful experience.

 
 
In April, we took a short trip to New Brunswick, Canada. I will write another post about that soon. I also took part in a letter writing campaign during National Letter Writing Month called Write_On. I learned about this from someone who sent me mail during InCoWriMo. I'm so glad I learned about this because I've connected with some amazing people online. I'm hoping to get to know many of them! Their mail is incredible. Everybody seems so interesting and talented. Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for Matt?) I have discovered many new snail mail related companies I'd like to try out too. I will share some of those with you too in future posts.  Here was some of my outgoing Write_On mail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

      I don't really have any talent with visual art, but the nice envelopes I made were from recycled calendars. (If you're a person who sees me regularly and you ever have a calendar you're about to throw out, consider saving it for me.Vintage stamps too!) I realized as I was writing this post that I don't often write many letters/cards/etc. to family and friends that I see often. Truthfully, some of the reason is that I know many of you don't "get" my "weird mail obsession," but if you'd ever like some postal joy, let me know and I'll send something out to you.
     I've been good about writing, but I've been awful about logging things. If I owe you a letter and it's been a long time, please let me know. I have a large "reply" pile but I'm less than a month from when I received your letter. If it has been more than that, please touch base.
      Ok, I have to head out to modify a quiz for my 6th grade music class. Have a great day!  If you're new to the blog, feel free to say hello and introduce yourself.