My life part nine

Apologies for making this so long, never thought this 'series' would take this many blogs. Anyway, it's for me and I'm feeling good that I'm actually writing every day and (somewhat) taking stock of my myself. Not much more to go.....
So in 2008 my kids are in high school, I've finally gotten certified/licensed as a real estate appraiser and our beloved dog, Sarge, passes. As mentioned 2006-2008 were pretty gloomy for me and the financial crash didn't help - especially as real estate was now my career. No money. Well, very little. So in 2009 I went to Julie and said let's start a band. One where we can make some money. Julie and I've known one another since the 1980's - she's always been in bands/involved in the CLE music scene/produced the cable tv show 'Cleveland Rocks' (I was the gossip reporter) and I knew that we could do something financially viable. Both of our husbands are musicians but you can't make money in CLE, playing locally, with a big band of live musicians. And I needed money. College was looming large. So we decided to sing to tracks. We spent some time checking out other local acts, knew two women who were doing pretty well singing to tracks together (lead and harmony) at restaurants and Julie came up with the idea of 1960's girl group, The PopTarts. www.the-poptarts.com.  She knew two other singers and voila we were successful out of the gate (after a bit of rehearsing of course). We've been playing over 130 gigs a year (that's a lot!) for nine years now. We have over 13 pair of go go boots, matching Mrs Santa outfits etc. Three records. Two songs in a Lifetime movie channel movie- Love at the Christmas Table. Fans and 'groupies'. We are very lucky but we've worked hard and do a really fun, entertaining show. There is nothing like having people tell you 'you've made my day' 'you girls make me feel so great' and having even small children dance, sing and, basically, adore you. We make people happy and we're doing something we love as well. Win Win. We had two gigs this past weekend and one tomorrow, so it can be exhausting. But I am grateful for this part of my life.
So I'm gigging a lot, two of my children go away to college and one to California (that's been covered already). Real estate rebounds. In 2015 J and I make a second trip to Europe together. Paris, Rome - where we meet up with our middle daughter who was spending her junior year of college at KU in Leuven, Belgium. The three of us travel together to Barcelona (highly recommended) and then to Leuven so we can see where she's been studying. Great trip. Now we're gearing up to leave this Saturday for ten days in Europe - thirty years after our first, honeymoon trip there. Our other two children will join us for this one, wish we could all go, but C's got a wedding to be in and a school year to close out.
Gotta run, XXOO
La