I want to be a magical piano player someday

Joe is finally out of the army! Hooray! He had his last training drill in April, turned in all his equipment (except the uniforms and other items he gets to keep), and got his last reservist paycheck. They are supposed to invite him back to an award ceremony later where he will get a plaque and coin and "some other stuff." He is happy to be done, and I am happy that I don't have to spend one weekend a month without him. :)

We sat down today and looked at our budget. Since I have lost my job, I have been able to temporarily relieve us of some ongoing bills until I am able to find employment and get paid again. We consider ourselves very lucky that we are able to get by without me having this job. It has been tough almost all year because of my being sick, but not having any extra money from my job (and now not having any extra from the army) coming in, we are going to have to make only a few slight modifications in our expenses while I'm unemployed.

And this gives me hope that someday I might be able to be a stay at home mom. Of course, with kids come added expenses, but hopefully Joe will continue to find opportunities to advance in his field, and maybe I'll be able to start making some money myself teaching piano lessons or something like that.

This past week, Ashley (one of our cats) had to be taken to the vet because of "the pirate eye" (Joe's words). By the time I took her to the vet, her eye was mostly better, with only some slight swelling and discharge. The vet thought she might've run into something (I do that all the time, just not usually with my eye!) or been scratched when wrestling with Sandy. She is back to looking healthy again (about $40 later) and back to wrestling and getting into mischief.

We had stake conference this weekend. Joe and I were amused by one of the speakers last night, who didn't enunciate her words carefully and ended up pronouncing words in ways that we found rather humorous. For example, instead of saying effort, she said what sounded more like "effret" and "mugician" instead of either magician or musician (I'm still not sure which one she meant). Then she made up words like "Ecclesiastics" as a book from the Bible and "favoritist" and "story tells". It's a good thing we were sitting toward the back, because I couldn't stop laughing at a couple points, and I would've been distracting to many more people than I was if more people were behind us.