The Journal has welcomed a new member to its family.

Ley Bouchard joined us this week as a staff writer. In all fairness, she will be a writer for both the Pine River Journal and the Lake Country Echo, but since her office is at the Journal, we are claiming her as our own!

Staff writer. You know what that means, don't you? She will be covering all of those exciting meetings: school board, city council, comprehensive planning, water and sewer (ewwww). Hopefully our editor will throw a couple of exciting things in once in awhile, so as not to scare her off too soon. Maybe the occasional human interest story will pique her interest enough that she will forget, for a moment anyway, about the problems a city is having with expansion or the fact that sewage runs downhill (no, those two are not necessarily related).

Besides the excitement of adding a staff member, we had the enjoyment of warmly welcoming Ley into our "family." In this office, that translates into a "bring-food- and-eat-all-day-long" celebration. We're good at that here. We do it when one of has a birthday, like last week, and while we were stuffing our faces, someone said, "Ley is starting on Monday. Let's do this again for her first day." No argument here. If there is one thing we are good at, it is bringing in food to share.

Funny thing, too. We generally don't plan a menu ahead of time. We all just bring in whatever it is we feel like making, and it all just falls into place. We usually manage to include all the main food groups, too. We never have an over-abundance of salad, too much meat and cheese or too few main dishes. An office full of women can't go wrong when it comes to providing food.

How, you might ask, do we decide it is time for a celebration such as this? Well, if someone new is hired, someone quits, someone gets married, someone has a baby, someone has a birthday - or someone says, "Hey, aren't we due for an all-you-can-eat day around here?"

So, Ley, we at the Journal welcome you with outstretched arms, warmth, love - and the occasional buffet.

You can reach Mary Bruemmer by e-mail at mary. bruemmer@pineriverjournal.com