Friends

Kelsey takes art class on Tuesdays. Her teacher is a lady named Sandi Van Winkle. Kelsey started taking these classes back in the fall at the Fountain City Art Center. The art center is in the old Fountain City Library building at Fountain City park.

When Kelsey started taking these classes, she was really just a tagalong for Sydney, who was wanting to take art classes. After going through the first six-week session, however, Kelsey was the one who stuck with it and Sydney bailed. Weird, I know. Kelsey has never been the super-creative one, never really showed a lot of interest in coloring or anything resembling *art*. But since she's started these classes, she's really blossomed.

I have to say that I think the whole reason for Kelsey's newfound interest in all of this creative stuff is her fabulous art teacher, Sandi -- or Miss Sandi, as Kelsey calls her. It is funny how small the world is really. After talking to her one day after class, I realized that Sandi knew a lot of the same people I did, having grown up (and still living) in the same part of town as my mom.

Sandy is an artist. I mean a REAL artist, not just like the Bob Ross kit at Hobby Lobby kinda artist. I mean she's the real deal. She's a graphic designer for income, but in reality, she writes, illustrates books and does just about any kind of artsy, creative stuff you can imagine. As I found out today, she's also a video game geek and evidently there's some interesting footage floating around town of her showing off her talents as a Rock Band gamer. And she loves working with kids. After seeing the change in Kelsey creatively, I can testify that she has the magic touch.

So today, I spent almost two hours just chatting on the phone with Miss Sandi, just about this and that. We chatted so long her battery on her phone gave out. It may seem weird that we would have that much to talk about, but after a while it became obvious we sorta share the same outlook on things -- from religion, to kids, to school, to books, even video games!

It's hard as an adult sometimes to make new friends. I think it's especially hard to make them when you have kids. Parental competetiveness is a horrible, horrible disease and it oftentimes will prevent any real friendships from blossoming. So I was glad to make a new friend in Miss Sandi today. Her kids are all grown up now, so I think the ship might actually sail on this one. She is a blogger herself, so I'm going to leave a link to her site in case you might want to check her out!

Sandi's Art