A Heart-Warming Day in the Frigid Homeland

In spite of the wicked cold today, my heart has been warmed with gratitude for the simple, small town pleasures that I enjoy living here. I went to Physical Therapy and chatted with old friends as they came in. (And I DO mean some that go WAAAAY back, like to 1979 when I first moved here and started La Leche League in Galax.) After PT, I made a round of the usual errands: post office, grocery store, and bank. At every stop, I'm welcomed with smiling, familiar faces (who greet me by name and make small talk.) Our Special Olympics coach, Vickey works at the post office. And Judy has a grand daughter with autism. We share an unspoken bond. At Kroger, I talked shop with Lisa, a new to our area homeschooling mom and hug my old friend, Harriet, another one of the original LLL moms. At the bank, Becky helps me track down some mystery transactions and reassures me that she is, indeed, at work behind the scenes to get the Methodist church to loan me their 3 octaves of bells that are not being used.

We ate dinner tonight at Agape's favorite restaurant, the Western Steer, which really isn't named that anymore, but old habits die hard with Agape. After supper, we went over to watch some of the Upward basketball games and hear the Mt. Vale youth praise band play. Lots of hugs there! Katy, Daisy, and Rachel were jamming in the band. Elizabeth Anne arrived to play her game with all of her birthday slumber party guests in tow. And Valerie is sooooo excited because it is her first sleep-over ever and, "I'm only 7 and Briana had to wait until she was 13 before she slept over!" She is bubbling over. Her mom is probably at home throwing up. Everywhere we look, there are more of my handbell kids there. Agape kept exclaiming, "Look mom! There's another one of your hand-bellers!"

We wrapped the evening up at the Blue Ridge Backroads live radio broadcast at the Rex. This is just one of those completely ubiquitous Galax things to do. Jo Anne and Betty, the clogging teachers, meet you at the door, and then proceed to fawn all over Agape and how much they miss her at the classes. (They loved her so much, that they wouldn't let me pay them anymore!) Agape heads right down to the front and shakes her booty there the whole show. Tonight, the Snyder Family Band from Lexington, NC were the guests. I met this family last year at the Appalachian JAM night, and I absolutely LOVE them! They are a beautiful, oh so sweet, homeschooling family, and extraordinarily talented, too! And Laine even remembered my name from meeting me last year! So that you can see for yourself, I am embedding a Youtube video of them here for you to watch. After watching the video, surf on over to The Snyder Family Band website and buy one of their brand-spankin' new CD's.

I'm off to bed early tonight for tomorrow we PAR-TAY down at the Rescue Mission all day!