Life in the mountains to the tune of Bluegrass: Family Reunion concert July 7th

Each year I hold a family reunion at our house here in Idaho, and I always hold it around the 4th of July. Towards the last day of it I put on a bluegrass concert right in my front yard featuring my two bands plus the Kids In Bluegrass. Our place here is a perfect setting for a full festival so it works great for this concert each year.
This year it was decided to hold the concert on the weekend after the 4th because the 4th was on a Wednesday and also because I open up the show to all my neighbors and friends in town. Grangeville has a celebration around the 4th called Border Days and it's the largest celebration of the year for the town. In the past I've held my show right on the 4th or at least on one of the days of the Border Day celebrations and so this has been a little tricky getting all my Kids In Bluegrass kids available to play for it. This was my reasoning for holding it after the 4th when all of their celebrations were over with and also on a Saturday so that working families could make it here more easily.
We ended up with about 75 people this year and John BBQ'd hamburgers and hot dogs while the rest of the people pot lucked the other dishes.
The show kicked off at 3 in the afternoon with the Kids In Bluegrass which included a lot of my grand kids who were here for the reunion, then I also had my new kids band called "The Bluegrasshoppers" play and they were able to play without any help from me. They did so well that their parents were in shock and smiling ear to ear throughout their performance. A lot of the crowd of people were coming up to me telling me how they just couldn't believe these kids and how good they were. Today Gail and I were visiting while the grand kids swam in the pond and even she was shocked at how well "The Bluegrasshoppers" sounded and was so impressed with them. None of them had heard how well the kids have gotten because at their lessons I basically do a band practice with them helping them learn to play as a band now, but their parents are always busy working around the house and the kids are practicing upstairs in a room large enough for us. So anyway I was so proud of how these kids have been doing and how good they were for their first real show on stage. I really love it when they do their favorite song "Barefoot Nellie". They just come to life when that song comes up on their set list and their eyes dance with excitement. I can hear them say to each other. "Barefoot Nellie" guys as they smile and kick it off. Then they sing it with extra zip and bounce. I'm so glad I thought of that song to teach them. They do the stop in it and everything and really sing it out well. I'm just standing their grinning ear to ear when they play. I'm so proud of those kids! It's something I've worked for and now it's materializing! Pretty cool for me to say the least.

After they played then our girls band "The Foggy Mtn Girls" played and Lynda Schostag got to sing with us for the first time in a performance on stage. Before she moved here she had never worn a pair of jeans in her life and in our band we wear overalls and straw hats so this has been so fun for me to see her letting loose and having fun with us. Now that they live here she bought herself some jeans and just loves them. She wonders why she never wore a pair before, and I've even gotten her to wear the overalls now. Our girls band has so much fun practicing and playing together. I've got to get busy and learn more songs to keep up with being able to teach the kids more of them and also learn more for all my bands too.

The Foggy Mtn Girls

Finally the headliner band "Will Williams and Gravel Road" played with Hannah on the mandolin for the first time in a performance. This band recently lost our mandolin player Chris Williams, Will's son because he had to take a job where he works weekends, so Hannah who I'd taught a couple of mandolin tunes to said that she would switch and learn mandolin better so she could take over the spot in the band. Anyway this was her first try at it for a performance. We had a great time and my brother Larry, from Stanwood, WA, and his girlfriend Beth took a whole lot of great pictures. They own really good Cannon cameras with really good lens. Every year he gets me tons of really good pictures, and I just love getting all of them.