I'm so exciting!

When Mr W was little, he'd say, "I'm so exciting!" when he meant "I'm so excited!". Well, I'm excited for sure because I got an email yesterday morning from my brother R in South Carolina. He asked if I'd be around for certain dates in August for them to come to CO to visit, as he found some really good airfare prices for the four of them.

I replied back immediately - yes!

For whatever reason, it's hard to get from there to Denver. Not sure why. The fare he found was a little more than half of what it usually is. A couple minutes later, he sends another email that he went ahead and bought the tickets. Yea!!

And just like that, I've got family coming out to visit in August. They want to go cabin camping for a few days, so we'll look into that. More pressing to me is how my little house will accommodate guests. My other brother and SIL might come too (haven't heard from them yet - fingers crossed that they can make those dates), so I might need to house six.

I was thinking about sleeping arrangements, and if I bunk on the floor in Mr W's room (which I don't mind in the least) I can give J and M my room, and R and L and the girls can be in the basement. I recently made a push to make it sort of a sitting room, so it's partway there. I need to think about how to best make them comfortable down there, but it's certainly doable.

I think the visit is a good excuse to finally push to get the deck built off the living room. I've been hemming and hawing over doing it, but it's time. We do a lot of hanging out for these visits, and it would be nice to have the extra space. I also just want it for me. Every year I've been here, I feel like I hide in my house in the summer because the yard is in full sun most of the day. I'm planning on having a deck with a pergola kind of roof and placed for shade cloth (and eventually grape vines). Morning coffee on the deck - ahhh.

In other news, I did chat with my banjo instructor about how I felt lost trying to keep up with the other players at the jam last week. Turns out she's teaching me a different style from what people out here play, which is more of a three finger style, and she's teaching me a two finger style. Ooohhh. So it turns out how I'm playing is complementary, but a little different than how they play. Well, that makes sense, and I feel better about it. She's going to come with me next week and showed me how to play a couple of the songs that B gave me that they play pretty frequently. I feel better about it.