My mother invited all of her in-town children and grandchildren to come over to her house for a “camp-out” this Memorial Day weekend. So we took sleeping bags and a change of clothes and headed over for the fun. There were a few small tents, but the rest of us just slept under the open sky on the deck. We decided that it’s a great way to camp, with private bathrooms inside and not much packing and preparation necessary. It was unseasonably warm this weekend, and we spent a lot of time inside in the air conditioning. But the weather cooled down nicely so we could enjoy roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire, and we enjoyed sleeping outside.
I just finished writing an e-mail to my mother, and it occurred to me that perhaps you would enjoy “eavesdropping” on my conversation with her. Here’s a bit of background to the music topic in the e-mail: It has been her dream for years that her grandchildren would learn musical instruments and form a family band. We have recently had our children express an interest in various instruments, so we’ve started heading in that direction. This very day we took Luke (age 7) and Amelia (age 4.5) to their first violin lesson. What a big day.

Anyway, here is the e-mail.

————-

Subject: music practice
Date: May 29, 2006 8:00:08 PM CDT

Dear Mom,

After we got home and unloaded the van, Michael decided to go back to your office to take care of things there. Whatever it is that he’s doing requires completion before your work day tomorrow, and he didn’t want to put it off.

After he left, I put my three youngest children in the bath with luke-warm water. They played for a bit, then one by one I took them out. I started with Judah, toweled him off, then put baby powder all over his clean little body. I had noticed some heat rashes on the kids, so I decided to powder them all over and especially in their crevices. Once Judah was clean and powdered and dressed in a onesie, I let him play on our bed while I put a clean sheet and light blanket on his bed. Then it was Mike’s turn to get out of the tub. He found it intriguing to be powdered. Amelia heard all the commotion involved with powdering and she got herself out of the tub just as I was finished getting Mike dressed. I then toweled off Amelia and powdered her. She wanted to do some of her powdering herself, so I let her do that. Of course Mike wanted to do some powdering of HIMself too! They both have well-powdered tummies now.

Then I put clean sheets on Mike’s and Amelia’s beds. Finally it was time to tuck Judah and Amelia into bed. Mike did the tucking for Amelia while I settled Judah. He was so tickled to have the big-kid job of settling his older sister in bed. Thanks to his very long nap today at your house he’s getting to stay up late.

Once we came downstairs the older kids were eager to play with the violins. I helped Luke review his lesson, and then I gave the same lesson to both Laura and Isaac on the bigger violin that you had at your house. It fits both of them perfectly and they were eager to learn the lesson.

Finally Isaac went off to play his game on the computer and a little while later Laura came downstairs with one of the guitars from upstairs. Before I knew it we had both guitars downstairs along with the pitch pipe and a guitar book. So I gave Laura her first guitar lesson! Thanks to my short burst of guitar learning some months ago, I was able to show her the things I knew. I think the guitars we have will suit her just fine. Her hands are big and her arms are long. She is able to reach the chords on these, so I don’t think we need to get a smaller guitar for her. She’s growing so fast she’ll be perfectly suited to these in no time.

I’m really pleased with our music practice. Oh, and Laura reminded me that she had found a violin in Todd’s basement, so she ran across the street to get it. It’s missing a string and the bow is missing it’s hairs, and it looks like a very old instrument. I’m going to take it to Kidder Music this week and see if they think it’s worth getting fixed up. Our other guitar came from Todd’s basement, and it was worth fixing up, so maybe the violin is worth something.

What a nice end to the day.

Thanks again for making this Memorial Day weekend memorable.

Love,
Christie

—————-

You can view photos of our weekend at this link.