In which blogging finally pays off

I have heard about people making money by blogging. Personally, I think being a professional blogger seems exhausting, but don't we all have a little dream deep down inside that our hobby will suddenly become really popular and we'll be rich and famous? So I guess there's a part of me that thinks that I should get SOMETHING for all of this excellent writing :)

You can tell it's excellent writing by the way I use emojis. Very professional.

It's not even an emoji. It's a colon-parenthesis smiley face. The height of writing sophistication.

But this week, my blogging paid off! It all started back in...like...2005 or something...when we met Donald and Laura Mueller in grad school. They were some of my favorite people pretty quickly.

Ok, now we'll skip forward to 2018, when the Mueller's son won his regional spelling bee and qualified for the NATIONAL Spelling Bee, held at National Harbor, a short 4 miles from our house!! They contacted us for traveling information, and of course they came to visit us when they got to town, and it was SO. MUCH. FUN. reuniting with them. (Another example of sophisticated writing...) They're still some of my favorite people.

Of course, now you are all wondering how their son did in the spelling bee - he did wonderfully! He missed the cut-off for the final by only 1 point, which puts him at about 46th (or was it 43rd?) out of 500 participants. Wow.

But the part that relates to this blog is that Laura had read my blog, including my gush about Tostitos chipotle salsa. So she brought me some!! I mean, who has friends that not only read your blog, but also remember things in it AND bring them to you?!? Me, it turns out! After they left this afternoon, I put my kids down for naps, got a bag of chips, and dipped in. It was lovely.

So, any of you other loyal readers out there... (.....crickets chirping....) Ah, never mind.

Us with the famous person! He's the one in the back by Marriner. And Laura - I chose this pic out of the 3 we took because this is the only one you could see the celebrity's face. Ha ha! Great at spelling, but still a kid :)