Back from New Jersey again...

Hello. It's been a while since I've updated here. Matt's grandfather passed away on Monday so we took an unexpected trip to NJ (and back the next day!). I didn't know him well but it was obvious that he was a great man and I'm sorry I didn't know him better.

Incoming:

     This is a lovely penpal letter from Susanne in Denmark. She is one of my newest penpals and I'm grateful to have found her.  The Little People man looks really at home surrounded by all those Disney princesses :)  I also have a letter from South Africa that I need to photograph. I'll do that later tonight since I'm too lazy too do it right now. ;)

      Here's some mail that has gone out recently.

Outgoing:

   I also have other mail to photograph but these letters are going to my 2 soldiers, Alabama and... shoot, I forgot- Australia, I think. The bottom one is one of my favorite envelopes that I've made recently- even though it's lopsided. I have not photographed all of my outgoing mail but this past week I have sent letters to: Uganda, my 2 soldiers, Alabama, Ethiopia (my Compassion International child), Australia, Massachusetts, France, and The Netherlands. I also sent some postcards out.

The 366 Project:
Received: 27
Sent: 69
    I'm still far away from receiving my 10% goal by the end of last week but I will definitely hit my 20% of outgoing letters written by the end of August. I'm hoping to maybe even get 25% out. I'm running out of letters to respond to though so hopefully I'll get many on Monday. 

Other random stuff:

Here is my son Timmy, super excited to be eating with the chopsticks that Akiko sent us. Thanks again!

Here's my youngest son, David. This is on the day of his preschool orientation (which was full of meltdowns). He was much happier once we were outside playing.

This is a concert I played at Revere Beach with North Shore Philharmonic Orchestra. I'm pretty my invisible here but I'm back where you see the lights, playing xylophone. It was a nice night out. I love the picture of the fireworks.

    I've also noticed I have 2 more followers to the blog. Welcome ladies! Glad to see you here.

 

 

 

Chopsticks!

Incoming...

    So far this week has been a slow mail week but the mail that has come in has been really nice! I received a beautiful Postcrossing card on Monday.  This postcard is from Lithuania. It shows the Trakai Island Castle.  I love the colors in this card. Narina actually put a nice Trakai stamp on the card too. I love it. Thanks! Here's the card:
LT-223497

    Then, yesterday, I received a package from my friend, Akiko, in Japan. She sent me some beautiful chopsticks for each person in my family as well as a very interesting letter which I can't wait to respond to! (Love the information about naming!  I had a conversation about naming with a friend from Uganda yesterday. It's fascinating to me to hear about how children's names are chosen. )

 Outgoing:

    I'm still playing around with making envelopes. Here's an outgoing envelope that I'm sending to Susan in Alabama. I made a whole bunch of envelopes from a New England calendar.  So, any of my penpals who live outside of the States or in a different part of the country, those envelopes will show what my area looks like- or at least areas I can get to pretty easily.  Here's Susan's envelope. I'm probably going to start photographing the envelopes before I write the addresses since I haven't been able to figure out a "non-tacky" way to cover the address. 

The 366 letter project:
Received: 23
Sent: 59
      If you're dropping by my blog for the first time, I'm attempting to send and receive 366 letters this year- one for each day of this year. Yeah, I'm behind right now. SMALL GOALS: Get 20-25% of sent letters out by the end of August. 2) Get 10% of received letters in by the end of next week. So, if you're a stranger passing through, feel free to send me a letter about yourself! E-mail me and I'll give you the address. I love just hearing people's stories so you can just tell me about your everyday life if you're unsure what to write. 
     It will just be sad if I send out 366 letters and have 50 responses. Honestly though, even though it's a large goal I set for myself, I would rather have sincere letters of substance than to just have 366 papers come through the mail. I love to penpal because it enables me to travel the world without leaving home. (I would love to ACTUALLY travel too but being a teacher is not a hugely profitable adventure!) I love making new friends across the world and sharing knowledge and goodies with my children. So, I guess I have fully accepted the fact that I would much rather invest in people (and be invested in) than to just get lots of stuff in the mail. Sorry, rambling.