Village Flutes » Blog Archive » One Heck of a Year

One Heck of a Year

In the words of Mark Twain, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” It’s been almost a year and a half since my last post, which is quite embarrassing for someone who spends so much time in front of a computer.

Last time, I related a story about how I quit my job and started doing freelance web work so I would have more time for family and flutes. In case you haven’t guessed by now, that part-time freelance work really took off and quickly turned into a full-time gig. By early 2007, I was working full-time with a friend of mine, putting all my energy into growing our little web design firm. It wasn’t really what I had planned on, but it just kinda happened. In March, we hired another full-timer and got some office space. We started pulling in some big clients and things haven’t slowed down since.

My family and I went down to Musical Echoes in Florida last April and had a great time listening to music and catching up with old and new friends. A few people showed some interest in my flutes, and I was planning to come back home and get to work.

As fate would have it, within a matter of days of getting home from Florida, the most hectic year of our lives started. My wife and I found a new house that we just had to have. We needed more space for the upcoming addition to our family, and we wanted to get rid of the stairs that we hiked up and down at least a hundred times a day. As an added benefit, the new place had a two-car garage, which effectively doubled my workshop space. We closed on that house in June and started getting things set up.

In August, Charlie, our second son, was born. He was about a month premature, which wasn’t a huge deal for us because our first son was two months premature, so we already knew what to expect. By mid-September, he was ready to come home from the hospital. Then, when he was just a month old, he had to have emergency surgery to fix a problem with his stomach.

In November, I spent about 12 hours in the emergency room and the next week on the couch, all because of a kidney stone. It was my second one, so I knew instantly what was going on when the pain hit.

In December, Charlie had to go back to the hospital for another surgery. His first surgery had been very successful in fixing his stomach problem, but then he developed a hernia, so that needed to be fixed as well. Since then, he’s been doing great and is packing on the weight.

I saw an article last week saying that this was the worst cold and flu season in years. We’ve certainly seen that in our household, because we’ve been hit several times in the past few months. After three cases of bronchitis, one case of walking pneumonia, and a round of stomach virus for everyone, we’re finally feeling human again.

It’s been a rough year since Musical Echoes 2007. The 2008 festival is this weekend, and we can’t wait for the trip. We always have a great time down there, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing everyone. It’s just like a great big family reunion. Here’s hoping this weekend marks the beginning of a new phase where I can get back to making flutes (and I really hope we can all avoid hospitals for a while).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 10:16 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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