An injured baby Fawn we found today

Today started off really busy and I was trying to get everything done that I wanted to do when my best friend Gail Williams called to invite the grand kids and me to go on a short 4 wheeler ride.  John came in and was adamant that the kids have to wear a helmet which is beyond me why suddenly he's decided this is important.  I was so upset because the older kids don't want to have to wear one and so I told them I didn't know if I was going to go or not.  Then the kids wanted to go badly enough that they were willing to wear the helmets so I decided I'd get over it and go too.  Part of my reason was I had so much to do but the main part of my reason was that I was upset at John for being so demanding on the kids wearing a helmet when he's never been that way before.  But anyway as it went I decided to go ahead and go. 
I was hurrying up to get out the door cause Gail had called and said they were headed for the ride within 15 minutes.  So off we went 7 kids on 5 different 4 wheelers and we headed up the trail behind the Limehouse's house.  We had no sooner turned up that trail when we came across this baby deer just 2 days old laying sprawled out in the middle of the trail and obviously listless and not doing well. 
There was no mother in sight and this little guy was only a few hours away from death.  Gail picked him up and began rubbing his tummy and stroking his neck then she even gave the little guy mouth to mouth.  Pretty soon he was bellowing and making sounds of distress, but was pretty weak so we loaded the little guy onto the 4 wheeler with Gail holding him and one of her grand kids driving.
Lucky for us we have two Veterinarians living right here on our mountain and this baby deer was found on their property right behind their house.  We went straight there and they examined him then gave him some naturapathic medicines to help ease the shock, and then we sat out on their porch as they examined him some more.  
He had one eye that was cloudy and full of dirt and several small bites near his eyes on his head but the main injuries were to his front legs.  We could see that he was skinned up pretty bad there and had some chunks of skin and fur missing near his front leg joints.  They had dried up already so it had to have happened a little bit before we got there. 
The Limehouse's gave him an IV of fluids right away to help with shock and dehydration too.  Then we fixed a surgical glove with a hole in one of the fingers and put some canned milk along with a little cooking oil into the bottle, and hooked the glove over the top of the opening and tried to get the little guy to eat.  After a few tries he did actually take some milk. 
Gail took him home and put him into a playpen bed in her bedroom and covered him up to keep him warm and quiet and the little guy just laid there like a cute little baby.  We tried to see if he could stand up but he was too weak to get up on his legs and we noticed that he would tip his head as if there was some brain damage there too. 
Tonight the Limehouse's picked up a baby bottle and some goats milk which is supposed to be the closest to a deers milk then they went over to examine the little guy again tonight and he's doing ever so slightly better, but still is holding his head crookedly, so that's our biggest concern at this point. 
We're just hoping that he will come out of the brain trauma and then we can nurse him back to health.  Gail has nursed 2 other deer when her kids were young but it's been over 20 years since she last did that.  The one deer she did that to years ago became pretty tame and would even be in her house when it came around.  It would even go to the door when it needed to go to the bathroom, and even though she'd turned it loose when it could survive on it's own it would come back and come right into their house. 
Finally it stayed outside and was a regular deer.  This one is a little buck and only 2 days old so the poor thing is lucky to be alive.  We're lucky to have the Limehouse's living here to help the little fella. 

 All the grand kids are wanting to pet him as Gail looks him over.  You can see his cloudy eye.

 Grand daughter Cortney pets the fawn while Wyatt and Thayn look on.

 My two best friends Gail and PT examine our little Bambi.

 Gail Williams and I along with her grand daughter Allyona.

 Grandson Tanner, best friends Gail Williams and PT the Veterinarian.

 Gail's and my grand kids at Limehouse's place.  Lot's of 4 wheelers.

 Grand daughter Tori

So that was my day today.  An exciting thing for my grand kids that they'll never forget since they're all city kids. 

Bluegrass Pickin Fun Times with Friends Old and New

A month on the road and now we are home as of 10:30 this morning....  It's been a great last few weeks and we came home to see Will, Gail, and 10 of their grand kids helping them work around their property raking and picking up branches, burning and just working together as a family.  It was a wonderful sight seeing our house again and being greeted by all these kids who I also teach bluegrass music too.  They were all waving and shouting to us, welcome home, welcome home.  This is the coolest place on the entire earth to be living at.  You just don't have neighbors and friends like this anymore but we sure do.  It was just plain old awesome that's all I can say.
I was sad to have to leave Weiser a few days early but I was also grateful for the time that I did have there.  I used to never miss a year at Weiser when I lived in Missoula, then we moved over here and now I'm only 3 hours away instead of 7.  I haven't made it there a single year now.  Crazy! What's up with that!   Well I guess it's the retirement thing and wanting to have the grand kids spend more summer time with us which has limited my time at Weiser cause I can't watch kids and have any fun playing music.  They're just a little young to take and let them run loose quite yet but soon they'll be able to do that. 
This year though I thought ahead and didn't take any of the younger grand kids until after Weiser week.  We have been on the road for a month doing all sorts of fun things with our grand kids and you can read about those  in other posts but the last part of this trip was all fun bluegrass things.
Grass Valley was so awesome and the jamming was incredible.  I made new friends, Jeanie and Susie meeting them on the first evening that I was there so each night I'd head right back to their camp and jam with them again. 
I played a lot of fiddle there and a lot of mandolin too so this was especially fun since I've been playing so much guitar in the last few years.  I've been working on my bluegrass technique on my fiddle and it was just way fun to experiment with playing it in a bluegrass jam circle.  So anyway that was our week at Grass Valley, hot weather, hot bands, and so much fun for me.  I loved seeing the fun vendors that I have gotten to know down there too and even Jerry Logan had a booth again this year so I bought two more of his original bluegrass necklace pieces too.    I already have one of his which is a mandolin peg head necklace made out of silver with a black onyx stone in it which I bought more than 10 years ago right there at Grass Valley too.  So anyway he had a booth there again and I got to visit with him and catch up with all what both of us have been up to.  I ended up buying two more of his necklaces so that now I'll be able to interchange this one I've been wearing constantly this last 10 years.  I also was able to buy 3 new/old  fiddles from a fiddle luthier guy who always has a booth down there too.  I was looking for some smaller sized fiddles for my students who can't afford to buy one, and was excited to be able to get 3 German made ones for a total price on all of them of $240 the normal cost of just one fiddle. 
All of these things added up to make my Grass Valley week so fantastic. 
After Grass Valley we had a long driving day up to Weiser Idaho for the National Fiddle Competition week of fun.  I needed to get back home here to get our place ready for hosting a woman's retreat out here in about 10 days, and also my big family reunion and bluegrass concert day that I do here each year over the week of the 4th of July.  Lot's to do to get ready for these, but John was really great to let me get in 3 days at Weiser jamming with friends.
I was really surprised to see several of the people who I'd jammed with down in Grass Valley up there at Weiser too.  Our daughter Gina and her new husband own a business where they go to fairs and such and sell food.  They were camped in the LDS church's parking lot which borders the city park in Weiser and so they suggested that we could park there too and that's what we decided to do.  I was good with it as long as I had access to the truck to go jam as much as I wanted to and it worked out just fine saving us $60 too.  It was also really good since we had the grand kids, Cortney, Tori, and Tanner with us as and it gave them things to do while there.  They could walk up and go swimming just a couple of blocks away or they could browse the vendors booths of which both things they did a lot during the 3 days we were there.  I had such a great time getting to see my Weiser friends and play a little music with them again.  I just love all those people so much and only a fellow bluegrasser can appreciate and understand how those friendships run so deep.  When I first got there my good friend Richard saw me and gave me this great big hug saying how glad he was to see me there.  It was a wonderful welcome to Weiser hug and we visited for over an hour just catching up on things.  
The Limehouses's were with us at Weiser too and even though I'd always talked so much about it they had never been there or seen it.  They stayed an extra day and let me take them on a grand tour of everything so we got to see a guy re-hair a fiddle bow,  and I got to show them the Institute area where we all jam an usually camp too.  I was excited that they didn't just hurry off and not get to see all the things that make Fiddle week at Weiser such a special thing for all of us who get to come each year.  They got a real feel to it all and had a nice relaxed day of walking and seeing it all.  I had a fun time showing them all the ropes and introducing them to my friends too. 
Last night, my last evening at Weiser, I got into a jam with a guy who was playing a musical saw.  He could make that thing sing and another lady, myself and one guy on the bass plus two of us on fiddles made up the jam.  It was a great little jam and suddenly I turned around to see standing behind me a lady who I met at Weiser 20 years ago, Julia Milleson.   She was standing there listening and holding her fiddle not realizing that it was me jamming.  Now Julia has had a pretty hard time of things these past few years.  First of all she lived with and took care of her aged mother until she passed away at almost 100 years old and then shortly after her mom passed on Julia got cancer real bad and had heart trouble to boot.  She was so weak that she had to move in with her son until she could recoup, but she got better and is looking great now.  She told me that she's been cancer free for a year now and that she's living in her own home once again.  It was fun to see her.  I think it's been close to 10 years since we last saw each other but I do keep in touch with her on the computer here, and she's in her mid to upper 80's herself now!  So it was just so good to get to see her and doing so well too.  She got out her fiddle and played with us for about an hour. 
Then later that evening I wandered over and jammed with JD Webb and his wife Judy for the rest of the evening.  Suddenly about 1AM here walks up Helen Smith.  She'd just gotten there and her husband drove their nice 5th wheeler up there for her then plans to come back and get her this Saturday.  I let her use my guitar since I was playing fiddle and then we got to play together too this way. 
Finally at around 2:30 I turned it in and drove back down to our camper where I cuddled into bed with John content at the wonderful few days I'd had to be bluegrassin it, but sad that it was ending, but happy that I was going to be coming home too. 
I always enjoy browsing the Weiser gift shop where sometimes I find the coolest souveniers of Weiser week.  One year I bought a banjo shaped cribbage board, one year blank note cards with cool vintage pictures of old time fiddlers on them, and this year I found a super cool wooden plaque where someone wood burned a little girl wearing chaps playing a guitar on it and then it says Get along little doggie all wood burned into it.   They used old saddle straps on it for decoration and then they nailed horse shoe nails across the bottom of it making it a perfect necklace holder for me.  When I asked the price and was told $20 for this nice 20 X 12 inch plaque I was shocked that it was so reasonable and I knew that it was going to be this years souvenier and so I grabbed it.  They had about 3 others that were each uniquely their own design but this one is the one I liked best. On the back is wood burned into it Weiser National Old Time Fiddlers Contest  2012 which is their 60th aniversary.  It's very fun and useful too.  The wood is off an old barn making it a really fun little piece and it was such a fun find.  I also ran into an old aquaintance there named David who wrote a song about all the things we experience each year at Weiser week and he'd written this several years ago when Weiser was in it's hey day so it has all the cool memories of those years for us.  The year that he'd written it he would play his guitar and sing it and this one guy recorded it live at our jam, then later put it onto a cassette of which I'd bought way back then.  Suddenly here he was sitting there again this year and so I asked him if he might have that song recorded onto a cd so that I could get it and put it onto my ipod.  Well he had some other friends there who had downloaded that jam session recording onto their computer and so upon visiting with him I found out that he would ask his wife to burn it onto a cd for me.  I was so lucky to get that and I count it as another prized souvenier from this week too so I'm going to get it onto my ipod for fun memories as I listen to it.  I was sitting and playing along as he sang it and it was recorded so this is a very special song and luckily I got it again. 
Today as we drove in and had 10 kids waving and smiling shouting welcome home to us just made an end to this perfect trip feel so good to us. 
We not only swam in the pond earlier today, but we also had our first night time swim in the pond tonight.  It was pretty fun and at first we were seeing bats flying over head of us, then suddenly more and more came in and we even had some pretty huge ones of a different variety come in too.  One scared me a bit as he sort of dive bombed some insects right above my head.    Grass Valley pictures.....

 Weiser pictures...

I guess that's about all I have to say this evening so I'll say goodnight and will be posting regularly once again. 

An update on Willie

I haven't been able to post on here for awhile because I haven't had access to Wifi but also because I've just been so busy playing music that I haven't wanted to or taken the time either.  I thought it would be good to update this blog on what happened to our Willie.
He went downhill fast the last part of the week we were in Grass Valley so Father's Day Sunday after we'd gone to church there in Grass Valley we decided that he would need to be put down.  Now I'm a person who absolutely hates putting an animal down unless there's just no other choice and Willie had gotten so weak and bad off that we decided we were going to just have to do it.  He couldn't eat, and was so weak that he couldn't even jump up onto our short little camper bed.  The kids or us would have to lift him up so he could lay there on our bed where he loved to sleep all day.  We even put a small amount of food and water up there for him and then John rigged a little litter box so he wouldn't have to try to get up there anymore.  It was just pitiful to see him try to jump up just a foot and not be able to make it landing on his backside each time.
Then he got sick and lost control of his bowels so we had a big mess which I was trying to clean up out there at the campsite.  Poor little fella was just ready to go home and so the Limehouse's who had a fellow Veternarian coming up to the festival had asked her if she could bring the stuff to help
Willie out.
We all went to church for Father's Day which was a very nice service and then had decided that when we got home we'd have to put him down if he was still alive.  I had to put the poor little guy into the bathtub of our camper with a blanket and all his stuff until we could get home and do this.  So after church we gathered the kids and let them all say goodbye and be there when we did this.  I had Tanner take John's and my picture holding him and saying goodbye.  John was especially close to Willie because just a couple of years ago Willie would jump up into John's lap every day for his belly scratching and he'd roll right over on his back and purr away as John would scratch his tummy.  They were especially bonded so it was hard to see the little guy in such shape and hard for us to have to do this but we knew it was the right thing to do.
We had a family prayer before we did it and I held him as he passed peacefully away and went home.
Banjo climbed up into my lap and said goodbye too and now she's been missing him off and on.  Sometimes she's okay and other times she's meowing in her siamese meow and looking for him around the house here.  Tomorrow we're going to have a funeral graveside burial for him and the kids, with the help of John are going to build him a wooden box and decorate it for him to be buried in.  I just wanted to update my last post since I had written it about Willie.  We love you little fella.

Our cat Willie

I want to write this quickly to get it in here before I forget to say something about our little kitty Willie.  Willie is our cat Banjo's daddy and we've had him since he was just finished as a breeder cat.  He's started going downhill the last couple of years and just recently is worse.  I was worried to leave the kitties at home for an entire month and especially since Willie is going down hill so fast. 
Well the first part of this trip he was doing great and then suddenly he began going downhill really quickly.  Two days ago he got incontinent and we had a mess all over John's and my bed, but I was able to clean it up as best as I could and John was good about it too. 
Pt and John Limehouse brought along fluids to give to him and this revived him enough to keep going until we can get him home hopefully.  He's just so frail that he can't even jump up onto our bed now and this has just started in the last few days. 
John and I are hoping that he makes it long enough to get him home and then I'm afraid we're going to have to put him down. 
I'm sad about this as he's been a very sweet cat and it's very hard for me to have to put any animals down.  I want them to pass away naturally and I just hope that we won't have to do that with poor
Willie.  He's about 19 years old and so he's lived a full life.  He's had kidney failure for about 2 years now and the Limehouse's said that once that happens an animal usually only lives 2 weeks to 2 years depending so he's been able to make it for almost the full 2 years of this time. 
I took a picture of him and Banjo laying beside each other on our camper bed today.  She's going to miss her best buddy, her dad. 

We are praying for him to pass away on his own and if not then when we get home we'll have to help him out.  The grand kids are having to lift him down to get water and he's not really eating anymore either.  He looks at the edge of the bed and debates jumping off of it to come get water but then decides better of it because he doesn't want to have to jump back up there, and actually he can't jump up there.  He tries but he lands back on his backside and just can't make it, so we have to help the poor little guy out.  He's just nothing but skin stretched over his bones.  I love you Willie and I'm sad to see you in such a condition. 

I love the elderly and the young

Well now this post will have the correct date to it as it really is Saturday June 16th the day before Father's Day and here we are at the festival which is almost over now. 
I had a very special moment in time today of which I tried to make it a teaching moment to my grand kids, but am not sure if it went over their heads or not. 
So this is how my day shaped up this morning.  After we got a breakfast of biscuits and gravy that John had made finished up here, I decided to head over to the stage area and start listening to the music.  As I was looking for a chair in the shade, as it was already really warm, this elderly gentleman takes my arm and offers me a chair next to him.  He was just the nicest, kindest man on the face of the earth and his eyes just danced with joy at being here at this festival.  He introduces himself as Buster and after a few minutes of sitting beside him I found out his real name was Richard Kraft but that his wife had given him the nickname of Buster which he prefers to be called by. 
He visited and visited with me between each song and telling me how he lives near this area and how when he got up this morning his wife asked him what time he'd like to leave to come on over here.  He told her "early and I'm staying late until after 11 at least."  He was talking and telling me that he lives only about 7 miles from here but that he can no longer drive.  He then tells me about in his younger days he traveled a lot on vacations and even went to Europe once for 6 weeks but got homesick to be back here during the trip.  He says to me, "just like the little girl in the movie, I feel the same, There's no Place Like Home."  As he said this he began to cry and I could tell that his mind was taking him back to a better time when he had his youth and could do more of the things he enjoyed. 
He noticed my wedding ring and he touched it and said, "I like seeing this."  I told him that we were celebrating our 40th aniversary this year.  Once again he teared up and gave me a big hug.  Then he saw me taking pictures of the different bands and people and he says, "here let me take a picture of you."  "I always tell my wife to take lot's of pictures, as you can always delete the ones that don't turn out and you can just buy a new camera chip card when it fills up but that a person can get about 1,000 pictures on one of those things.  I don't think he understood that a person could put the pictures on their computer and then erase their chip and begin taking pictures again. 
My heart was so filled with joy at meeting this wonderful, happy man who told me that he loves the Lord and was such a happy man.  It was a great way to start my bluegrass day off and later when I came back to the camper I tried to use it as a teaching moment with the kids about attitudes and being kind to people and happy in life.  That making choices is always an option and that we can always make choices to be happy.  His spirit emulated his kindness and I loved this guy and wish that I could have gotten information to keep in contact and write him letters or phone him etc. 
I have several good friends who are elderly and not in good health and I love those friends deeply.  Today I added a new one and if I see him later tonight I will give him my phone number and see if I can get his. 

I'd love to add him to my calling list of people that I love to call and check on.  So here is a picture of him and of us and I know that when you see it you'll see his beautiful spirit too.  Richard "Buster" Kraft....A good example of kindness and living a Christ like life in our everyday living. 

On our way to Grass Valley Bluegrass Festival

The date on this post isn't going to be correct because it actually happened a few days ago as we were driving down to California to Grass Valley to the annual Father's Day Festival held here.  We have taken 3 of our grand kids from Utah with us and as proud as I was of them a few days ago, now it's been a different story as this trip has progressed.  They've been bored and complaining to us making the festival less fun for John and I.  But that's not what this post is about anyway it's about our drive down to here which was on June 12th when we headed out of Herriman Utah and we were to drive over to Winnemucca, Nevada then pull into the Walmart there and wait for the Limehouse's to arrive. 
We had less of a drive so arrived earlier than they did, so we were there and parked by 2:30 in the afternoon and they were due in at around 5:30.  It was nice and warm but not too hot so I decided to sit outside our camper and practice my fiddle.
I enjoyed having the time to do so and the campers around us were thrilled to get to listen to me which was fun for all of us.  Suddenly after about an hour of practicing I see this man come running towards our camper pushing his shopping cart and shouting at me that he'd been listening to me fiddle on his way into Walmart and again on his way out.  He said that "I was pretty good and he loved the music and was also a mandolin player."  He had his mandolin along with him in his semi which was parked in a dirt lot beyond our camper.  He asked me if I'd mind letting him play a couple of tunes with me as he said he had a little bit of time he could spare.  So I of course said yes, then he ran to his truck and grabbed his mandolin out.
It was a nice Gibson F-9 and he knew a lot of bluegrass tunes to play and was pretty good on it. We ended up jamming for 2 hours and of course all the campers had pulled their chairs outside of their own rigs and were listening so we got to entertain them a bit too.  He told me that he was from Oklahoma and that his dad plays the banjo and mom sings and plays too.  He'd been playing along with them since he was a kid and so had learned a lot of the old time tunes.  We had a great time and it was so fun passing the time this way until Limehouse's arrived.   This guy had long hair and a long beard and was wearing a Harley Davidson t-shirt so when he got ready to leave I asked him if he rode a Harley to which he replied that he has a Heritage Softtail Classic the same bike as John and I have.  What a small world and what a fun day that turned out to be.  I posted about this on Facebook and got a ton of reponses from people who say they camp at Walmarts all the time but never thought to get out their instruments and play or practice but from now on they're going to start doing so.  I commented back that us Bluegrasser's need to unite and play whenever we camp at the Walmarts and start a bluegrass revolution of a new trend. 

It was just so very fun that I had to share!  Now all my bluegrass friends are laughing and saying "Only you could start a jam in a Walmart parking lot, all on your own as you park there."  I love it!

Grass Valley & Weiser here we come

Well this will be my last blog post for a couple of weeks cause I won't have access to my computer for a couple of weeks as we head out tomorrow morning for the big Grass Valley, California bluegrass festival.  We've been to this festival several times in the last 10 years or so and it's always a very fun one that we just love.  In fact Grass Valley was the very first bluegrass festival that my husband John went to.  Before that he didn't think he'd like them and so would never use his vacation to come along with me even to the local ones.
Years ago though our good friends Ron and Barb Cole invited us to come to this festival with them and help them run their booth where he sold the mandolins that he makes.  I finally convinced John to take some vacation time and come see what a festival was truly like.  He had so much fun that afterwards he told me to go sign us up for a CBA membership so that we'd get their newsletters and would know about Grass Valley again the following year.  He was ready to go again and ever since that fateful first Grass Valley festival he's wanted to take me to a lot more of them and even other festivals too.  Anyway now with a bit of that history, I'm excited that we get to head out once again for Grass Valley this year, and tomorrow morning is the day.  The extra bonus fun to the rest of this trip too is that on our way home to Idaho we get to stop for a couple of days at Weiser where they hold the National Fiddle Contest every year.  I always love to camp there and jam with friends who I only get to see at Weiser and no where else, and the last three years I've missed out on getting to go so this year at least I'm going to get a few days there again. 
We're going to get to take with us our 3 oldest grand kids, the ones here in Utah who's brother just left to serve a mission.  Those kids used to play bluegrass when they were younger and I was teaching them.  They even played two different times in the Kids On Bluegrass program that the CBA puts on at all of their festivals.  Now days though the kids don't play anymore and have lost the interest except for Tanner the youngest.  He's 13 and he still has some of the interest whenever he's with us, but when he's home here without us around he's just like the others and doesn't play or have the interest.  This of course makes me sad, but we get to take them to Grass Valley and then to Weiser too, so for this I'm happy. 
I'm hoping that this trip will kindle a fire in them once again and even if it's just for this week at least I can keep a little bit of bluegrass in their life for the moment.  If they decide to play and have fun with it then I'll sure be happy about that.
So now I'm going to post some pictures of these grand kids when they were playing at this festival several years ago. One year in particular was very special to me.  They got to do the grand finale on stage in the Kids On Bluegrass program and for that the people running the program always get the headliner stars to come out and sing with those kids doing that finale'.  That particular year it was Rhonda Vincent, and Wayne Taylor of the US Navy Band.  My grand kids sang and played Rocky Top to a standing ovation of the crowd.  Grandpa and I were so excited and someone took a video of it and posted it on Youtube too.  Now I have a new friend who painted a picture of playing my fiddle and I'm going to save up the money to hire her to paint this picture of my grand kids playing the Grass Valley stage with Rhonda, and Wayne singing and playing over their shoulders as they did a fired up rendition of Rocky Top.  It was a moment in time that grandpa and I will never forget and if I can preserve it with a painting, at least that'll bring back those memories and be a real treasure for me.
 My dream would be for them to someday come back to the music when they mature and get older in life, and my grandson Jeff who just left to be a missionary gave me a blessing on the eve of his departure promising me that my posterity would carry on this music.  I have to have faith that some of my grand kids will stay with the bluegrass music I've taught them.  But if they don't at least I gave them the chance and it was their choice.
As for now it's going to be fun to get to take them once again to this festival.  Afterwards they are going to get to come to Idaho with us for a month so we're very excited for tomorrow to come.  These kids are now Cortney 17 years old, Tori 15 years old, and Tanner 13 years old.  I'll get pictures of them at this years festival and will post them in the blog when I get home. 

                                                I'll post some more blogs,and get lot's of pictures on how our festival part of this trip goes.. I love my family and my grand kids are the icing on the cake of life for me.

Tori got her drivers permit

My 15 year old grand daughter Tori has been studying to be able to take her drivers test to have her  permit.  She's had to retake the test a few times and I guess the one here in Utah is pretty hard to pass, but finally on Thursday of this last week John drove her to the DMV on their way to Malad for her to re-take it one more time.
She wanted to have her permit for when we took them all to Idaho since they'll be with us for about a month now.  Well this time around..... SHE PASSED... and so now has her permit.  She was so excited that she just ran up to the counter once the computer told her that she'd passed.
Then John took her and her sister Cortney up to Malad to work helping their other grandparents get moved in and helping John to lay some tile that they wanted done up there.  Well our truck is a stick shift but also they were in heavy traffic and such so now it's been 4 days and she hasn't gotten to try to drive yet.
This morning as we all headed out the door to church, Neil and Tanner had to be there half an hour early for a boy scout meeting that Tanner has each Sunday.  Tanner is the scribe for his troop so has to be there to take notes of each meeting, but anyway they needed to leave early and this was Tori's first time to get to try to drive their car.  Now I had let her drive our Jeep last summer on our gravel road where there's very little if any traffic, but this was her first time to try to drive on regular streets and in town.
As they were driving out of their garage, Tori at the wheel, and her dad Neil beside her with Tanner in the back seat I hurried up and grabbed my camera and shot these pictures.
Tori's first driving lesson and first time to drive with her new drivers permit.  

Go Tori, go.... Love you.. and here's the pictures to prove it!  Neil and Tanner look pretty relaxed!!!!

Sold the Droid, thank you Lord

I had prayed and then let it be in the Lords hands regarding selling my Droid phone so today hadn't even had it on my mind, other than I noticed that the battery was down on it this morning so I charged it full.
Suddenly at around 2:45 this afternoon my daughter Traci calls me and says that someone has called and is interested in my phone but wonders if I'd take $80 for it.  I was just thrilled to get the phone call so took the offer.  She wanted to meet up within 45 minutes to pick it up and asked if I could meet her half the way from where she was at to where we're at.  Traci told her that I could meet her at Carl's Jr at the District shopping area which is near the theater that we always go to when we're here.  So then Traci needed me to stop by where she is working at Walgreen's today and she would reset the phone to be factory new erasing all that I had on it.  I headed out the door immediately and stopped in to see her where she reset it all and then off I went to meet up with the gal, just praying that she'd show up and I could get the phone sold.
I drove the kids' little red Geo/Suzuki car that's a piece of junk of a car but hey the gas is cheaper than our big truck and it's easier for me to drive than that big truck too, and when I got to the Carl's Jr, I wasn't there more than 30 seconds and she pulled in right beside me.  She was a college girl who was very nice and really excited to get the phone so it made me feel glad that I could help her out and I didn't feel bad that I'd come down in price for her.  She gave me cash and I showed her how to work the phone a little bit then gave her instructions to take it to a Verizon to have it set up for herself.
I was so glad that it sold cause now I have the cash to pay for my tickets to the IBMA and if I use our Skymile points for my plane ride then I just have to save up about $500 for motel and spending money which I think I can do over the summer months with our band jobs.  Yay!
I'm loving my new Iphone and I got the white colored one and then put a black and white polka dotted case on it so it looks really fun.  The Iphones come in either black or white color but I like the white best and it looks really pretty in this case.  I'm learning all the different things on it that are slightly different than my Droid was. 
It's been a good day.  John and the grand kids got home shortly after noon, and he made $400 which is great for this trip, and now tonight we're meeting up with Casey and Ashleigh to go to dinner at a Chinese restaurant which is my favorite so I'm lovin it. 

New IPhone or not...

Well I did something today that I hope I don't regret.  My grandson Jeff who just went on his mission is a master salesman and just has good luck at selling almost anything. He's just like his dad that way.  Two days before he left he listed his Android Verizon phone on a classified site down here called KSL.  His phone was the exact same model as mine and within just 30 minutes of listing it he had 4 people call wanting it.  The very next day one person came forward and bought it for $80  just like that.  My daughter said that people buy them because they can get them without any contract agreements and so they're in demand. 
Well I've been wanting to upgrade my phone to an IPhone and the cost of the IPhone with a new 2 year contract agreement is $199 so I get the idea that if I can sell my Android like Jeff did then the new IPhone is only going to cost me half as much, and it would be a great deal.  I also decide that if I'm going to do this, now is the time because my daughter Traci can help me learn how to use it too which is an added bonus when you're a technological bone head like me. Of course this could have been just me trying to justify getting it too, hmmmmm not sure there.
So anyway last night I prayed about the decision and felt nervous but also excited cause I really wanted to do it.  It wouldn't be so nerve wracking on me except for the fact that until I start getting a retirement check we have to watch our spending each month.  I mean we live comfortably but we can't just spend money without really thinking it out either.  I knew that if I went through with this phone thing I was going to have to spend my music money to get the better phone and I've also had a lot of extra expenses come out of that account this past few weeks so it was praying on my mind whether I should do this or not.  I called John who's up in Malad helping our son-in-law Neil's dad lay some tile flooring at their new house and I discussed it with him, hoping that he'd be all for it and give me the okay to do it.  Well he was neither for it or against it and just told me to think it through as the money would be coming out of my music account anyway, which I knew of course.  So he was of no help in my decision process either.
This morning after sleeping on it and praying some more before getting out of bed, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge and get my old phone listed.  So at around 1:00 my daughter Traci and I went to the Verizon store and I bought the IPhone.   We listed my old Android right before we headed out the door and now it's been all evening and not even one person has called on it. 
I'm going to use faith and prayer and hope that Heavenly Father will see my need, or rescue me from my stupidity to answer it and bring me a buyer tomorrow.  I spent $200 in gas to help us get here since we're also going to be going to Grass Valley to a big bluegrass festival there as part of this trip and I felt like I could contribute.  Then my good Nikon camera broke and I had to spend another $150 to fix that, and so now with this IPhone purchase, my music fund is depleted to just a couple of hundred dollars and I really want to be able to go to Nashville in September for the last IBMA conference to be held there. I know that I have a few money making jobs with our band this summer which will help, but I'm nervous as I said and if my Android phone would sell I'd sure feel a whole lot better for sure!  
So with these thoughts on my mind I retire to bed tonight and just hope that my crazy old phone will sell tomorrow.  I need to remember the saying "Worry Ends Where Faith Begins."  Now I'm off to say my prayers and hit the sack.   Let's hope I didn't do something stupid today!

Today we take Jeff to the MTC

It's been a few days since I've posted in here, but my heart is full this morning as we get ready to take our first grandson Jeffrey Jordan Christensen to the Missionary Training Center where he'll begin his journey of serving a mission for the next two years.
We've had many spiritual blessings this last two weeks as we've spent these this time leading up to today.  It's due to the blessing of early retirement that I realize we were able to be here for this entire time and be a part of each and every step leading up to today.
We arrived here in time for the first event which was his farewell at church where he was able to give part of the sermon and plan the entire service how he wanted it to be that Sunday. He had a special man who he loves how he sings, do a musical number of a Primary song that he loves, "Armies of Helaman", and some of the young kids who he's taught in his Primary Sunday School this last year sang with this guy in a really neat arrangement of the song.  A person couldn't listen to these kids, and this man singing and not be touched by the Spirit.  Our daughter and son in law Traci and Neil put on an open house for him afterwards and it was well attended by a lot of people wanting to support him.
My parents who live in Billings, and Jeff's great grandparents were able to drive down here from Billings to be a part of that weekend.  My dad is 85 and my mom 80 and it's not as easy for them to drive these long distances like it once was.  I thought about how wonderful this was for Jeff to have his great grandparents still alive and still in good health so that they were able to make this trip and be here for him on his special day.  A lot of kids at his age don't even have their grandparents still alive let alone their great grandparents, and then to have ones in good enough health that they were able to be here for him is an extra special blessing.  To have grand parents who value gospel principles and want their grand kids to be worthy active church going people following Jesus is another blessing of his.  Not only has he had parents who've taught him to follow the Lord, but he's had grand parents and even great grand parents who've all set a good example for him to follow and stay strong in the Gospel.
Then the next step drawing us closer to today was going with Jeff to the temple and being able to go with him a couple of times this last week.  It was very spiritual for all of us getting to be there with him, and he had a lot of family support with 17 of us there that first evening.
Now Casey and Ashleigh were able to be with us last night as we all went to with him to be set apart as a full time missionary.  His Stake President is a really wonderful man and he took the time to visit with all of us and with Jeff on the importance of hard work and living to have the Holy Ghost as his constant companion as he labors to teach and help the people he'll serve in the St Louis, Missouri area.
We all felt the Spirit so strongly last night, that there wasn't a dry eye amongst any of us, and Ashleigh commented that she hasn't felt the Spirit that strong in a long time.  Jeff bore his testimony to all of us about how he felt being a missionary, and when we came back to the house here he gave each of us a blessing, his first as a missionary.  It was very apparent that the mantle of a full time missionary was on him and a testimony to me of the truthfulness that God is our Father and Jesus our Savior.
When we were finished with that we all helped him pack for today.  He has to be at the MTC by 12:40 and we want to stop and buy him a black back pack and some of the last little supplies that we noticed he still needed as we packed last night.
His dad has written him a couple of personal letters to take with him and open once he's out there in the mission field and this morning I was prompted to write him one myself so I took the time to write down our conversion story and my feelings towards him.  I have felt the Spirit so strong this morning as we prepare to head out the door now, and I want to tell my grandson here in this blog how much I love him.  I'm proud of him and of his parents who have taught him correct principles and brought him up to be able to make these correct choices on his own.  They've brought all these our grand kids up to be very independent and make their own decisions, as they guide them to make good choices in all areas of their life.  I see this as we spend time here and sometimes it's scary for me, but ultimately I see the results and I'm proud of them all.  I love you Jeff!  I'll post a picture of you with all of us and in front of the MTC later today after I've taken it.

All of us as we dropped him off.

Now as a second part to this blog, we have returned back to the house now after taking Jeff and being with him as he entered into the MTC.  It was so neat for John and I to get to be a part of this last step as he began his mission today.  I love that we were here for every bit of the activities leading up to today.  

I Love My Life

I'm just sitting here pondering things tonight and wanting to say a little bit about how much I love my life.  I've had the opportunity to play in some of the best regionally touring bands in our area. Right now I'm playing in a band with the best banjo player I've ever heard in my life and if this isn't enough, I've also had the opportunity to retire early and spend every day with my husband who I love, love, love so much...and my best friends.  The early retirement has enabled me to travel with my bands and have the freedom to play at more festivals, and now my husband even loves to go with us since he doesn't have to use his vacation time to do it. 
These last few years have been some of my most funnest years ever spending everyday with my husband.  Not only do I get to play in my bands, but I also get to teach kids how to have as much fun with bluegrass music as I've had too.  Now I say how can it get any better than that!
25 years ago we moved to Missoula, Montana and I never dreamed life could be any better or that any place on the earth could be more beautiful.....until 4 years ago when we retired and moved into Idaho.  I loved Missoula and I loved my bands there too, and it was hard to leave.  While living there, we got to have our grand kids and kids live with us for 6 years while my daughter was going back to school to get a Pharmacy degree.  Our son and his wife and kids lived with us a few years at that time too.  I got to teach them all to play bluegrass, and those were great years. I loved every minute of it, and built great memories for all of us.  I just never thought life could get any better than that!

Now here I am living proof that it actually could. and I'm living my dream up in the mountains of Idaho in one of the most beautiful areas in the entire world. Being retired, and having my best friends living near us has made it all the better. 
It's just so unbelievable to me that my life has gotten better and better as the years have gone on.  I would be so ungrateful if I didn't take moments like these to stop and ponder and say "thank you" to my Heavenly Father. 
I can remember living in Missoula, feeling lonely and praying for a best friend.  This prayer went on for years and I would have some friends come and go but never a best friend like I had been praying for.  Now the Lord has answered my prayers and even gone further to give me lot's of best friends.  They live up on our mountain and we get to ride our 4 wheelers, swim in the mountain pond at my best friend Gail's house and best of all we all play bluegrass music together in our bands.  All this and right there at my house where I live.   
I'm playing more bluegrass, I'm getting to spend more time with my husband, my family, and with my best friends who I consider my family too, and we're all bluegrass musicians.. Wow!  
I just love my life, my family, my bands, and the mountains that I call home. 

A quiet day today

Well today has been quiet with not much going on here at the kids' place.  I enjoyed a lazy, daisy morning getting ready for the day and then Neil, Traci, John and I went into town looking for a new cable for their lawn mower to fix the auto drive mechanism in the handle. 
We all decided to try out a new pizza buffet place for lunch and then we went to several different small engine repair shops and also to Sears where the mower was bought two years ago.  Do you think even one of those places had the cable we needed!  After all the running around we came back home to the kids' house here and they decided to just use the mower the way it is and get it fixed at a later date.
So now I've just been relaxing on this computer and watching Disney cartoons with my grand daughters.  The kids have been invited to a graduation open house for a friend of theirs so I guess we're going to go to that in a short while here. 
I think I'm going to head out to our camper and practice my fiddle and mandolin before we head to the open house though.
It's kind of nice having a few days like this where I can do the reading and practicing like I enjoy and not feel guilty that I'm not getting other work done.  I may write more on here later today, but as for now this has been my day, quiet, lazy, relaxed and just sort of nice.   

Learnin Bluegrass Techniques on My Fiddle

I want to start off with a little preface here about my fiddle playing and the up's and down's that I've had with it through out my playing years. I know this is going to be a longer post but I feel it's important to talk about all the years of my music in order for me to tell you about today, so here goes.....
You see, fiddle was my very first instrument to learn and I began learning it because I'd always wanted to play roots type music from the time I was about junior high age.  I had this violin/fiddle laying around our house because I'd bought it for our son Tyler to learn to play in the school orchestra.  He was very good on it and learned very quickly but he was also self conscious and shy so didn't stick with it...so here it was just laying in a closet and calling my name with the happy fiddling notes that maybe I could learn. 
Here I was 35 years old and my kids were beginning to be old enough to not need as much of my care so I looked at that fiddle and decided "why not?"  I began asking questions from fellow friends who played guitar, mandolin, bass and such and inquiring of them just how I could learn.  I didn't find anyone who could help me and had become very frustrated, but then a lady in our church offered to help me learn to play it in a violin style. (Little did I know how valuable her teaching would be to me later on when I actually did learn to play in the fiddle style, because proper bow technique is very important and she got me started on the right track, holding my bow correctly, so it was a tremendous help making me a better fiddler)
I was very excited she was teaching me because, even though it wasn't fiddle style of playing that she could teach at least I was moving forward and learning how to play it no matter the style.
She worked with me for about a year or so and then we moved to Missoula and she moved away also.  I kept on working on what she'd shown me and shortly after our Missoula move I took a job working at a rest home for the elderly.  (I knew that we'd need an extra income in order for us to be able to build our own home and have the bank willing to loan to us and the rest home job was something I could get hired to very quickly).  
Little did I know that this was fate and the Lord leading my life in the direction I wanted to go.  I only worked for that rest home for 3 months but during the first month of working there one of my co-workers commented that we needed to feed the residents a little early and make sure that they were finished by 7:00 and everything cleaned up because the Old Time Fiddlers were coming to entertain that night.  I was so excited and she even knew one of the fiddlers names for me to contact!  My heart was racing, how could this be I thought, yay, yay, yay....  So afterwards I called one of the fiddler men and visited with him about how I could begin learning to fiddle.
His name was Frank Seitz and he had a grand daughter, Candice Seitz Neaves, who was 21 years old and had just won the Montana State Fiddle Championship that very weekend.  She was going to take just 3 students because she was a college student and didn't want any more than that.
I promised her that I was serious and that I would practice and stick with it if she'd only say yes and I was able to convince her after about a half an hour of begging to take me on as one of those students.  She taught me for 7 months and then in the Spring decided not to teach anymore.  It was enough for me to get started though and from that point on I was able to teach myself.  From the 2nd month of my lessons I began playing with that same Old Time Fiddlers group "The Centennial Fiddlers" who'd came to my rest home that first night.  This also helped me to learn my fiddle faster and get more practice time in but I remember being so nervous at first and thinking that I'd never be able to play as well as those guys.  I stumbled around on my fiddle those first few months, but then eventually I got better. 
I joined the Montana State Old Time fiddlers and would go to their jams which were always held on Sunday afternoons. At those you would sign up on their list and as your name came up you'd take the stage and play 3 tunes while the people danced to your playing.  I loved it and it was very fun but I wanted to play more than just my 3 tunes and then just sit and listen to the other fiddlers all afternoon, so that part was frustrating to me.
About 5 or 6 months into my learning the fiddle my daughter Gina who was 10 years old at the time was always tagging along with me to every fiddle event and one day a fellow fiddler named Dick Pederson asked her why she wasn't learning to play herself.
Up until now I hadn't even thought about her learning it as I was just so thrilled that I was learning, but she answered him, "maybe I will."  So this got me thinking about how I could get her a fiddle and get her started too.  (Looking back this was really the beginning roots to what has now become my Kids In Bluegrass program).
I remembered my father-in-law, John's dad commenting that he owned a fiddle and that one of the other cousins were using it.  I think this was a prompting from the Lord to remind me of it too and so I contacted this cousin and found out that they were no longer using it and that it was just up in their closet.  She told me that I was welcome to come and pick it up, and wouldn't you know it, the fiddle was a 3/4 size the exact size that Gina needed.
Thus began my years of fiddling and as I learned I taught her sort of like the blind leading the blind, but we learned together and played the nursing homes together and even went to the National Fiddle Contest in Weiser, Idaho together for many years and made many great memories, having so much fun.
So now returning to what I was talking about with me wanting to play more than just my 3 tunes at the fiddler jams, I decided to save up to buy myself a guitar and try to learn that.  You see with each fiddler that would play at their jams the guitar players would remain on the stage and play the entire afternoon, one tune after another with each fiddler, and in this way I knew that if I learned guitar, I would be able to play all day too.
Thus began my learning of the guitar.  I saved up and bought myself a $200 Sigma which I still own today and which Gina has used now as an adult.  I asked one of the other guitar players to show me some chords of which he showed me 2 of them and a week later Gina and I headed to our annual trek to Weiser and the National Fiddle Contest.  I took that guitar and I had people showing me and helping me all week long and I loved the new challenge and learning to play it.  I couldn't hear the chord changes but I would watch the fingers of the other players and one lady would mouth to me the chord changes so this was my beginning to learning the guitar.  I was at Weiser for 10 straight days and I played that guitar for over 12 hours each day, getting blood blisters that would pop on the tips of my fingers but then would only hurt for the first hour of my playing and after that I was good to play the rest of the day once again.
When we ended the week I could play that guitar so from that time forward every time we would play the rest homes with our fiddler group I would play guitar half the time and fiddle the other half of the time.  I wanted to keep up on what I'd learned and I also wanted to keep up on my fiddle playing.  At each of their jams I would play my 3 fiddle tunes but the rest of the day I was one of those guitar players who was playing with each fiddler.
The following year at Weiser I decided to wander more to further areas of the campers and jamming and I was walking down a closed off road by the Institute buildings carrying my inexpensive guitar in it's card board case all proud and excited when suddenly I hear a voice calling to me saying, "hey you, yes you, where you going with that thing."  "We need you over here, come join us and pick a little bit."  There were two people sitting along the irrigation ditch bank under the shade trees and it was a guy from Utah named Lonnie Hocket and his friend a lady also from Utah, named Sharon Mitchell.  Sharon was playing a Hammer Dulcimer and Lonnie was playing the guitar and singing.
So I proudly walked over to them and took out my guitar jamming in my first ever jam that had bluegrass singing.  It was so awesome and fun I just couldn't believe it.  When we'd played for several hours Lonnie pointed out where he was camped and invited me back that evening to his campsite where I'd hear really good bluegrass music with all the instruments and great harmony vocalists too.
That evening I didn't hesitate to go meet up with them again and now this is where I really heard my first super good bluegrass picking and singing going on.  The Spirit just overtook me and I felt it clear down to the very core of my soul with every song that was sung.  I couldn't stop grinning ear to ear the entire night.  Soon I was playing my guitar in the bluegrass style that they were playing and it was just coming natural to me to feel that feeling of having that bluegrass drive to my style too. Talk about an exciting moment in time for me, this was it!
From that point on I've never looked back and even though I continued to play with the Old Time Fiddlers at all their jams and at the rest homes for over 22 years, and still loved the old time fiddling too,  my true passion was bluegrass.  After that year I almost always played guitar and allowed my daughter Gina to play fiddle which was her first instrument.  We even went on to form a band called "A Deeper Shade of Blue" with her on fiddle when she was a teenager along with a fellow friend who's daughters were learning bluegrass too.
Now I want to say something here before I go on.... I've always loved the Old Time Fiddlers and I've always had a very fun time playing with them throughout all the years, and I owe them a huge debt of gratitude for getting me started playing roots music and eventually finding bluegrass, so I have nothing but good thoughts and memories to say about them, but my passion was now bluegrass and so through the years I've taught myself guitar, bass, mandolin, and some banjo too, and I've gravitated to bluegrass almost exclusively, but I let Gina stay with her fiddle and I mainly played the other instruments just keeping up on my fiddling but not moving forward to learn anymore and sometimes even going backwards a little bit.  I wasn't careful to keep practicing it very much through the years and now I have come to regret that.
So long story short, or I should say long story long with all this that I've written tonight, but anyway recently I've decided to pick my fiddle back up and begin learning to play it in a bluegrass style with bluegrass techniques which are different than the Old Time techniques.  This has been a lot of fun and I'm enjoying my fiddle as much as ever now.  I bought me a learning DVD on bluegrass technique and it's showing me how to play 6 or 7 tunes in a bluegrass style plus lot's of other bluegrass techniques.  I've gone through it and learned it all in just a week.  So today as we are at our kids' house down in Utah awaiting our grandsons departure as a missionary, I had a lot of time to just do what I wanted to do.  I knew that most likely I'd have some down time while here so I thought ahead and brought several learning DVD's on several of the instruments that I'm always working on.  I was able to spend 2 hours today honing my bluegrass fiddling skills and it was so, so, so, very much fun!  I'm also planning on taking some lessons this summer from a super good bluegrass fiddler in Missoula named Ellie Nuno. 
As a PS note.... our daughter Gina grew up and got married so she kind of left her fiddling for a few years.  Suddenly about 5 years ago she picked her fiddle back up and gave me a call asking if we couldn't get together and play like the old days of her youth.  I was of course thrilled to pieces and so the next time they were at our house we jammed and had so much fun again.  After that she had the fire to want to play again and from that day forward she has had more passion to play her fiddle than she even had as a kid.  You see when she was a kid she enjoyed it but she didn't have the passion like I did, and now as an adult she's picked it back up and she has the passion almost as much as I do..  :) 

This is a portrait painted of me last year by a new friend Connie McLeod who lives in Clarkston, WA.  She took the picture of me at an Old Time Fiddlers Jam last Fall. 

Daughter Gina playing in my band The Foggy Mtn Girls when we played our first festival at Round Valley, ID, for the Idaho Sawtooth Bluegrass Associations Annual Fall Festival.  Sept. of 2011. 

Now I've started an all girls band "The Foggy Mountain Girls" that is made up of girls who I've taught or worked with and Gina is our fiddle player.  She has really gotten good and strong on her fiddle playing and as I work and learn new bluegrass tunes and techniques once again I'll be teaching her, and our bluegrass family of mother and daughter playing together is coming around full circle once more, where I'll be teaching her as before. 
We have lot's of great memories of our music and festival playing times and now we're building new ones having so much fun as mother and daughter.
So today as I said I spent 2 hours on my fiddle, playing bluegrass songs and then I got to spend another hour working on my harmony singing, something that Gina is very good at, but something that I need to work more on.
And as I close out this note, I just want to say how blessed I've been through the years with all the fun times and opportunities I've had through all my different types and times getting to play music.  Included in these times are the two bluegrass cruises that I was able to go on with my current band Will Williams and Gravel Road and how we even got to play a set on the cruise ship stage both times.
I'm a very happy bluegrass mom.