Back to normal?

Today is the first day since we got back from vacation that I have felt really great. I don't know how one gets jetlag without switching time zones, but somehow I manage. I've been trapped in a terrible cycle of staying up way too late and then going back to sleep once the kids leave for the bus. Last night though I fell asleep so early that when the 11 p.m. bugle went off, I thought it was the 6 a.m. bugle and jumped out of bed so as to beat Mike to the bathroom. When I woke up enough to realize what time it was, I was positively overjoyed. You know how good it feels to wake up and discover you have an hour before you have to get up? Discovering you have SEVEN hours left to sleep feels at least 7 times as good.

Meanwhile, as I type this, I'm enjoying the bassoon music coming from Annabelle's room. She is now playing bassoon with the middle school band and the E'town youth orchestra, plus she just got invited to join the high school band for their winter concert, and she's continuing on with her private lessons as well. So she has plenty of music to practice! Sometimes I'll hear something especially lovely and I'll call out to her and ask what it was, and 9 times out of 10 the answer is "It's the Weissenborn!" The Weissenborn is her German-English bassoon "bible." When we say it, we pronounce the W as a V and put a lot of Germanic gusto behind it. That amuses us to no end.