The stuff blog posts are made of

Not sure what that stuff is that blog posts are made of, but I'm lacking in it lately.

I'm going to pull one out of my hat though!

Ok, let's talk music. I can always talk music, right?


See that cute little critter? That's my belated birthday present. My birthday hasn't even arrived yet, but it is destined to be belated because I can't order it yet. I've selected it, but I can't order it because the company actually expects me to pay for it and it's a professional model fife, not a cheap bamboo thingy, which means it's out of my price range for the moment. So, I'll be starting my own little fife stash whenever I feel I can justify grabbing money away from other priorities in hopes of welcoming it home soon.

In other news, we've made a few other decisions on things we will not be doing. First, we will not be sending our fine fiddle player to the kids' bluegrass camp like we hoped. There's a good reason for this, however. I spoke with someone who worked for one of these camps and he was very concerned that our fine fiddler is too advanced compared to the other kids. Instead, the money will be moved aside for some one on one fiddle lessons, because I finally found a teacher! He'll go once or twice a month, starting Monday.

Another thing we are probably not going to do is try to get into the Silver Dollar City Youth in Bluegrass contest this year. In all honestly, I don't think we're quite ready to wow them and next year we will be more ready to do just that. Oh, we're getting good, but I'd like our instrumental work a bit stronger and we need some solid songs that don't use penny whistle. LOVE that penny whistle and it goes nicely with much of our folk/historical sound, but it is against the rules for such contests and too many of our best tunes would need to be reworked. So, we thought we'd still go, but as a birthday trip for the kids and an educational trip to see how the other bands play and what a winner in such contests looks like, so we can become that future winner.

What we will be doing is a colonial history program in May, which means I get to sew! I need to finish those colonial dresses! We'll also have more recording sessions this month and next, along with a growing number of festivals for the summer.

What we will not be doing is a full garden this summer. I'd rather do festivals. I may do a small salad green garden on my deck in a box though. I like the salad makings, but I don't want to distract us from our other goal by working hard for a bunch of weeds to take over the hard work when things get busy.

There's a list of will be and will not be for now.

The stars at night are big and bright...

...deep in the heart of Texas.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few pictures... and a few words.
First stop: Carlsbad Caverns. Dez&Iz love caves and have proclaimed that Carlsbad has ruined them for all other caves.

We tried to enjoy the Alamo, but the younger two were certifiably insane with hyperactivity by that point. We saw what we could then headed over to the river walk in San Antonio to burn off energy.
Absolutely beautiful! Loved the walk. San Antonio is a lovely city.

Our first day by Padre Island was beach day, complete with freezing water and children who didn't seem to care that it was freezing.



Yes, I caught this fish. Biggest fish I've ever been this close to, let alone caught. It's a 42" black drum but it was 12" too big to keep so we threw it back. I'm rather impressed that the pole didn't snap.
We caught the turtle rescue on the island.
Nothing like gimmicky tourist traps too.

As January WHOOSHES by...

I think this month will end up being mostly a blur. Before New Years even hit, we hit the ground running to prepare for the GospelGrass Winterfest. I wanted to teach the kids to use only a condenser microphone for our set so we would record every night from the sound system to the computer in order to hear how we balance through one microphone, practice moving closer when you take your break, and balancing voices to instruments.


We caught most of it on video, but it was not digital video. Our old camera decided to be kind and work for us, though I forgot to turn it on during the first song, then it kept getting blurry when someone would sit in front, leaving it confused on where to focus. We tried to hook it into the computer and failed. We managed video but no sound. I ended up sending it in to a company that will put it up digitally for us. I received delivery confirmation so hopefully they will have it transferred so I can edit and download soon.

This week was my chauffeur week. Izzy was privileged to attend a banjo camp and spent about 8 hours a day for six full days with a class of banjo players and world renowned banjo master, Pete Wernick. She did great! She was the youngest in the class by 20-40 years. No one was even close to her age, and only 3 ladies, including her, against about 15 men. Thankfully, a wonderful woman from Wisconsin hung out with her. She was just fantastic and I'm so appreciative. I was able to relax the whole week and not worry about her. Of course that 90 minute round trip drive in the morning in nasty traffic, and a repeat in the evening in the dark with nasty traffic made my week not quite as exciting, but it was worth it.

Dezzy spent too much time in her pajamas, seemingly lost without the other half of her brain. I brought her with me a couple times to pick her up when Michael would hang out with the younger ones, and sent her to a friends all day on Friday to giggle and have fun. She had to do some baby sitting while I did some of that chauffeuring, but we'll try to come up with some kind of a guitar camp in the future for pay backs.

Now that the banjo fun is over, we are about to hit that ground running once again. We leave soon for Texas! We'll have three gigs, possibly four, and two of them are for general audiences, not gospel only. We are pretty solid on the gospel, but we'll need to work hard on the other set.

Tonight I get to revise all practice schedules for the band as well as individual practice, and tomorrow we play every night, come rain, shine, grouchiness, or otherwise. Monday is laundry day and every stitch in the house must be clean too so packing is easier. We have to be looking good! After all, it's our first "pretend" tour!

A Blessed Christmas to All!!!

It's been a wonderful Christmas so far and I'll make this a longer post to make up for a lack of blogging lately. The moments where sleep deprivation threatened to overcome my sanity almost changed the full effect of "wonderful", (it's hard to wrap when excited kids won't. go. to. sleep), but I just got up from a short nap while kids obsessed over their new toys. Now I intend to slurp down a coffee or six, and I'm good to go!

Last night we had a blast at Papa and Grandma's house with food and the cousins. Oh, did I mention there was food? I brought the pumpkin empanadas. This was the closest batch to perfection I've had so far. Still minor changes needed in the dough, but the flavor was there! I may have almost cracked the grandma code.

Pumpkin empanadas are one of my childhood "comfort" foods. My grandmother always made them but never was willing to share the recipe and teach anyone else how to make them. Thankfully, my aunt mostly swiped the recipe once while observing her make them before she passed away. However, the filling was just a bit off, like something is missing. I experimented and I have that "something" at least close enough for my taste. The dough has the right flavor, but needs a bit of work on texture is all.

In addition, my mom made her American version of egg rolls, with broccoli, cheese, and ground beef, which we all love. Most important was the boatloads of butter crunch popcorn they always make for us each year. It was largely a snack fest all day long, instead of sitting down for a formal dinner. I'll be paying the price for that snack fest too. I'll stress on that tomorrow. I'm still snacking today.

Ok, on to the pictures!

Christmas Eve Eve:
We had beautiful snow. It was chilly, but not as cold as it had been the week before last. The kids went out to sled down the side of the house.



Christmas Eve:

Grandma and Papa got the over-drama boy his own little digital camera. He is always good for an insane look when excited.

One of the easiest things one can get the Wonder Twins to make them smile is a new binder with automatic pencils. The fancier, the better, and these had shoulder straps, two 3-ring-binders, and lots of pockets.

Caught this mother's child spying to see if reindeer really would be flying.

Shortly after that was taken I kept hearing jingle bells. I couldn't figure out where and went into her room and looked out the window again. There was someone wearing a full Santa costume with a sack on his back, walking down the middle of the road, jingling bells. She wasn't looking out the window so I alerted her. She barely figured out what I was pointing at right before he slipped into the shadows, and down the street. Kind of weird.

Grandma Susan sent the twins Snuggies, which gave both a good giggle and a slight jealous look from the younger ones, who are victims of clever commercials.

Little Tinker Bell Teapot. Very cute.

The ULTIMATE Christmas present. A Batman electric race track would loops. Definitely a highlight of the day.

To avoid the constant run of sheet tents in the living room, we now have a play tent. The hope is that all those littlest pet shop critters and other small toys can be contained now as well if I make that her "small toy" play area.
It's nice and roomy inside, lots of windows, light seems to also come through the canvas walls. If necessary, I can hang a little LED flashlight from the poles in the top.

Sadly, Michael had to work yesterday and today. His hours are kind of weird so he was here for presents, helping to set up the Batman racetrack, and will have some time tonight to perhaps pull out the new family game. However, this does mean I'm going to relax on dinner. It's Friday night and we won't be doing a fancy Christmas goose with all the trimmings. Nope. It's pizza night. Can you believe it? Pizza on Christmas evening.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a joyful coming New Year.

Update time

I'm not sure why the enthusiasm for blogging has been thin lately. Even on Facebook, which I sometimes play on a bit too much, I'm not as into updating my status. Perhaps it's the Christmas season and I'm thinking of the mundane things in life, more than worthy of thinking on, but not particularly worthy of blog time.

Even so, it's been a joy the last week or so and I'll throw out a few pictures.

As tradition would have it, the youngest in the family gets to put up the tree top. Since the first two were twins, the tradition started when Calvin was little. I don't remember what we did before that, but I don't believe Izzy was allowed to put up the angel on the tree for her grand one minute later entry. I think they decorated and I put it up? Fuzzy memory.

Michael tried to give this mama a heart attack by allowing our highly unpredictable, and slightly nutty young man up on the roof to help with lights. He survived. I suppose it's a good thing he has a dad or he'd be nothing more than an overprotected wimp from his mother's worries. Izzy went up as well and when the ladder slid just a touch as she was climbing up, I managed to get in a good old mother scolding of how you should always have someone helping to hold the ladder. I was there and steadied it, thankfully. Lesson learned.

This was a funny moment. We were practicing one of Izzy's songs with a fairly redundant chord progression. Dezzy wasn't too interested in practicing, since she was caught up in a book, but we had to get in some work. The book would have to wait. I looked over to find her back to reading her book, strumming and doing the chords perfectly well at the same time. I stifled a giggle, and told her we need her full attention, please. When the book jumped before her nose again moments later while we paused in the song to discuss something she should have been listening to as well, we had to gently pry it from her strong guitar playing fingers until practice was over.

I've succeeded in my goal of not over-booking our holiday. This Friday I take the Wonder Twins to a Christmas party, Saturday we will be at the Bluegrass Church as the special music, then we have nothing until January!!! Ok, so January is completely booked - and I mean completely booked, but I intend to enjoy it while I can. My Christmas shopping is finished - and within my budget, cards are stamped and ready for the mailbox, we already made cute Christmas cookies last night, lights are strung, kids are excited... After years of freaking out during the holidays I'm starting to catch a clue. Less is more.

Now, if only I could find a way to prevent the unstoppable power of eggnog from overtaking my waistline. Can't have everything, I suppose.

Civil War Ball

Last night Michael once again had the privilege to escort a couple of dashing Cinderellas to the Civil War Ball. Unfortunately, due to delay getting the not-yet-beautified Cinderellas out the door yesterday morning for uniform check-in and dance practice, the good uniforms were gone and he was officially demoted to corporal. Not sure what he did to get demoted all the way from general to corporal, but he tried hard all night to not pout.They were just lovely this year.

The whole evening was one big giggle-fest, with some of their best friends attending as well. Nothing cuter than a small pile of hoop skirts smashed together laughing. They get up close in their little bell circle and all the bells pop out the back.

I got some cute video but I need to edit it down. Perhaps in the next day or so I can do that and show off a bit of the fun.

My son the chick magnet

My son is officially a chick magnet. Of course, the chicks tend to be over 80 years old, but they absolutely adore him. Michael and I have come to the conclusion that when the recital is performed at a retirement home, from now on we must hide him immediately after he plays his violin recital piece because the elderly ladies hunt him down to fawn over him and give him hugs, usually quite loudly and without any mind to the other students sill trying hard to struggle through their music.

Seriously. Michael had to remove Calvin from one lady who was very loud in her adoration and chatted too much, oblivious to the fact that her voice was carrying to where the other students were still playing. Then he went down to the bathroom where another lady nabbed him before he could sneak back to the upper level. Someone grabbed Michael when Calvin wasn't around to fawn over so they could fawn over him to his father, and two others got me downstairs.

He loves it and he'd be happy to chat back, but it isn't nice to steal the show when other students are working very hard and are probably far more nervous than my ego-boy who thinks this is all a fun show.



At home when we rehearsed, during his lesson when we rehearsed, during the piano rehearsal, and about 1 minute before he went on I told him to stand still during the piano parts, not to scratch his nose and twitch. So, what does he do the minute he gets up there? Scratches his nose and twitches. At least in the middle he scratched his nose with his violin, not his finger. That's progress, right?

I admit it. He's always good for a parental giggle.