Good Stuff

Look what I got tonight! When the girls get home they'll probably think these are exercise mats for Karate. Not any more! As of this afternoon they are my new blocking mats. the Karate studio near our house just got redone and they sold me as many of the mats as I wanted (I took 4) for $5 a piece. Hooray! Now I just need something to block.
Maybe I'll find something good in the new issue of VK which just arrived yesterday. It's the 25th anniversary edition. Have you seen it yet? I started to thumb through it and I'm not sure if I love it yet.
One week from tomorrow I will be picking my girls up at camp. It's not like I'm counting the minutes or anything but I can't wait. I miss them soooo much and no amount of adult alone time can really make me stop craving my girls. There is one thing that makes it a little easier - letters! Today we got a post card from Stinky and a real letter from DQ in which she doesn't ask for anything at all! This is her 4th year at camp and the first really great letter home.
I won't share it all but there was one super-cool part. Two years ago there was a woman, a Holocaust survivor who wrote a book about the experience, speaking near my house. DQ was just getting into reading about the Holocaust and I figured that there wouldn't be too many opportunities to hear about it from someone who was there so I took her to the presentation. It was wonderful and inspiring. At the end, DQ went and spoke to this woman for a moment and got her copy of the woman's book signed. Coincidentally, a reporter from the local paper was there to cover the event and took a picture of DQ and the speaker together and it ran in the paper. (We have many copies) This woman was at the girls camp to speak last week. (Her grandchildren are campers there too.) In the letter, DQ says that when she went to say hello the woman remembered her and they spoke for a while. What a wonderful experience for DQ!