Traveling is nice. Being home is really nice. (So what if I didn't get to bed until 1:30am last night? :P) I know, in a few months I'll be ready to go out again. But, right now I'm relishing a kitchen with an unlimited water supply, a stove that I can bake and cook in, and a quiet room to which I can retreat to when I want to go to bed.

Ok, so I left you all after my laptop died (*sniff*) in VA....

We left my grandparents house on Wednesday and headed up to PA. We sang that night in the basement of an old barn. The whole barn was remodeled and the top floor is a pottery shop. It was pretty neat! I thought I had some pictures of the potter working but I seem to have either formatted the card or misplaced them. : ( It was very interesting to watch Mr. Myers work.

We met some very sweet people there in the basement and we're so glad we went!

We had a great time of fellowship with folks from the church and left soon after lunch time to pick up 3800 cds in Lancaster. It was quite an impressive amount of cds to fit in our bus. :P



We formed an assembly line and filled Vincent's bunk to overflowing with 30 boxes of cds. Thankfully we were able to transfer them to the trailer and Vincent didn't have to sleep on the ground that night. : )

We then traveled over to the Kochers for taco salad and I got zero pictures. :P

On Friday we went down to Dover and sang at Modern Maturity. After the concert we went to WalMart and while some of us were shopping a lady pulled her car in front of the bus. She had heard us at the concert and was following us around because she wanted to give us a check. She lost us but thought we must have gone to WalMart. : ) It's amazing how the Lord puts things on folk's hearts!

We got back to the K's and enjoyed fellowship that evening! Sure was nice to see them again.

We had a nice day on Saturday. In the morning we hung out and played games (including Dutch Blitz :D). In the afternoon we went to a glass blowing place. I'll never look at glass the same again after seeing it glowing white/red on the end of those sticks! There must be a technical term for the 'stick' but I'm not sure what it is. Anyway, it was really cool to watch....er, hot. Whatever. :P They had big fans blowing to keep the craftsmen and on-lookers comfortable. The furnaces were quite warm!






We went to the book barn after. That was an interesting place!




Um, yeah in the parking lot the guys thought they would try to pick up Daniel K’s car. : )

Saturday was Daniel's 10th birthday.


(At the glass shop.)

He designed his own cake recipe. It was very good. : ) Great job Daniel!
Edit - It was a dairy free cake.


I'm testing out Susanna's camera here.




Woah, is that Daniel with my camera?!

That night we left to set up for the services on Sunday. The K’s were so nice and came and helped us. We had three services on Sunday morning. Part of the K's came and sat through all three 1/2 hour concerts. *phew* Thanks for coming guys.

Sunday afternoon we got to set up again and sing. I think I was tired by this point. : ) But, we had a great time after jamming with the K's.

All must good things must come to an end....we said goodbye *sniff* and headed north.

It was so nice to see familiar sights and sounds Monday morning. Yay! We got LOTS of calls today wanting to schedule us. I guess we’re going to keep busy this spring between concerts, recording, and working.

Lord willing we’re going to the studio to record tomorrow night. We have an 8 week deadline to finish the raw recordings and then we have to mix down.

Well, I’d better go work on finishing and posting this so I can sleep…*yawn*

Till next time!

Home! : ) : )

Nope, I haven't died!

The scoop is.....

(1) we're in Virginia
(2) we have dial-up
(3) God is so good
(4) my laptop died : (
(5) we're visiting grandparents until tomorrow
(6) the weather is nice and warm (well, pretty warm)
(7) we got to see SNOW!
(8) it was freezing cold for a few days
(9) Lord willing, we will be seeing the Kochers in 2 days (not counting today)
(10) and, Lw in 5 days we travel in the northern direction and arrive HOME

There is more to 'the scoop', but I don't have the time to expound on everything we did since last time I posted!

I'm really enjoying spending time with my grandparents. Oh....I think I'd better go help with lunch.

But, jsyk, no pictures this time since a lot of my pictures are gone for the moment and though I have some on Bonnie's laptop it wouldn't be advantageous to post since Corel doesn't work very well on her computer. *sigh* Anyway....pictures to come eventually!

Greetings and salutation from the highways and roads of North Carolina! Who knows when this will be posted, as always. I’ve been near DSL for a day and a half, but it’s always hard to collect my thoughts with a flurry of activity distracting me.

I’ll start our weekend story on Saturday when we visited the nursing home last minute in Raleigh, NC. The Lord brings me such blessing and encouragement through these elderly folks. I thoroughly enjoying singing for them! No one is quite sure what to expect from us and by the time we’re done they want to lock the doors, which is quite funny since most of the doors out are locked already. :-D

Sunday morning was interesting! We visited a family integrated church. All the children stay for the service and they don’t have youth group or Sunday school. We led a few hymns for them and had lunch with them after. The concert was after lunch.

I do believe we have groupies. Some of you aren’t shocked, I’m sure. But, can you imagine waking up at 4:00am (on the day you spring ahead?!) and driving 4 hours just to hear us sing? That is exactly what the T family did! I hope some of them were able to sleep a little on the way home!



The Lord bless you guys!

There were lots of families at this church, many with young children . We had a BIG line outside the bus waiting for the 10 cent tour after the concert!

The H family said they read a little of our blogs before we came.





The J family invited us home for supper and fellowship afterward. We arrived at their house and we were concerned about their narrow driveway with culverts on either side, a mail box and trees. Oooo. I don’t like digging and tow trucks. *cough* We did make it in and we’re so glad! We enjoyed food, fellowship, games, and conversation on Sunday afternoon, Monday and Tuesday morning!

Oh and we went shopping. : ) Have you ever had your picture taken in the produce department? You should try it sometime! I like the pictures their camera takes so I decided to blog their copy.



Peter tried on Caleb’s armor and crusader costume…





We taught them Dutch Blitz, showed them our commercial collection. :-D And, of course, we introduced them to Pat Hetic. ;-)

We watched Left Behind 3 with them. There was more violence in this one but I thought it was good anyway. The line ‘that’s not humanly possible, is it?’ was great! Yes, the enemy is powerful but ‘greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.’ It’s true the Lord has allows persecution of the saints, but he also miraculously protected and preserved the lives of those who serve him. As I’ve heard from two places recently, (paraphrased), ‘you’re immortal till God calls your number.’ The movie also reminded me that America will to play the very small role in the world wide scheme of things when it’s a global community. Yes, it’s coming but not a pleasant thing to think about. The encouraging thing is our security is not in America’s borders or being an American, but trusting in God.

Bonnie said I might post pictures of our little tire adventure….



You can see Vincent has already bent the fender back in this picture. PTL for his protection!

And, another little amazing incident I should tell you all about…..God sure knows where we are and what He’s doing. He indeed guides our steps and stops!

We’re driving along on the highway and dad asks mom if she wants to stop at Wal-Mart off the next exit.

‘Sure’, she says half heartedly, ‘let’s live it up’.

Lol. It wasn’t like we were all excited about this stop and it wasn’t planned. Though we do stop at Wal-Marts frequently.

We arrive and Mom goes in. Bonnie, Hannah, and I are getting ready to go in. We’re still waiting on Hannah to put on her socks when Papa exits the bus and starts walking around it. All of a sudden I catch a glimpse from the bus window of a white haired elderly woman throwing her arms around my grandfather as she exclaims, “I know you! You’re from my home town!!!!”

It took me about 2 seconds to figure out who this affectionate woman was!

Before we left on this trip Mrs. C wanted us to go visit Mrs. G in Florida. She’s the mother of our former neighbor and mutual friend of Mrs. C. We had lost touch with her but Mrs. C hadn’t and Mrs. C thought she knew what town she lived in. Turns out the town Mrs. C gave us was not on the map and we giving up visiting Mrs. G. Kinda hard to visit someone in a non-existent town!

‘Mrs. G is outside!’ I exclaimed to the rest of the family who had missed the hugging episode.

The community she lives in just happens to shop at Wal-Mart on Wednesday mornings, she just happened to see our bus in the parking lot, and we just happened to be in the parking lot! Of course, we know there are no coincidences!! The Lord knew she needed our encouragement and he guided our steps.

She was just THRILLED to see us. She said we ’spoke her language!’ lol We gave her a cd and Lord willing we’re going to sing for her retirement home next year. Isn’t it cool how the Lord works? : )

Mrs. G, Mom and Yours Truly.



Also, while we stopped Vincent saw some homeless guys and he and Peter talked with them and gave them Bibles. May the Lord bless the seeds that are planted on this trip.

Our time in Jacksonville, FL was great! The church had wifi. : D That was nice. This update wasn’t written, hence I didn’t post.

We got to spend a little time with our friends, the D family.



They came early to visit and stayed for the concert. And, speaking of the concert, it went very well! We’ve been there three times in the past three years.



Before we started the pastor said,

“I’m sure they will be telling you more about their trip”

and I’m thinking uh oh, now I’m gong to have say more than I planned! I ended up telling the septic tank and the Wal-Mart lady story. They were quite kind and knew when to laugh! Phew. That’s nice instead of dead silence!



Peter and Vincent outside looking for the connection last night. It was intermittent and kinda slow. I gain a new appreciation for being home with a constant wireless connection on every trip. I’m also seeing how nice life is without a constant connection! The net can be such a time waster and I’ve wasted more then my share.:(
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Hey, looks like we’re singing at a nursing home this afternoon. Last minute and sure beats sitting at the Wal-Mart parking lot!

A day late comes an update for all my faithful readers! Yeah, the WiFi at the rest area in Sunday was a non-event. Apparently the rest area vaporized and we never saw it because if we had seen it we would have stopped! We are in Mississppi, btw. After 6 weeks headed away from home we’re on the road back…it’s lovely to see us going the direction north and east. :-)

Ok, enough preliminaries.


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Place: Padre Island
Time: 8:03 PM [2003]
Date: March 1, 2007
Listening to: The Bach Album (Kathleen Battle and Itzhak Perlman)

Tonight the MacDonald family is resting comfortably on an island. I can’t say I expected to be here. : D I’d better back up just a little before I finish with today’s update.

First, remember I said nothing noteworthy happened in Houston the rest of the week that I needed to report? Well, Carol did a boo boo! :( Peter got a new mandolin! It’s sweet instrument and he’ll get much playing out of it. He passed his Kentucky to Matthew and Matthew passed his Kentucky to Nathan. I think we have happy campers all around. ;) We’re finally *cough cough* retiring the Fender with the pick up. YAY!!!!

Peter and his A9 just out of the store!



And, I mentioned we tried out a Nikon D80 in my last post. Peter and Vincent are now of the opinion my Minolta should be classified under ‘throw away camera.’ : p




We fooled around for about an hour and took 300 pictures. : D Yep. It’s pretty easy to do damage like that with it. Thankfully, you will only have to see a handful of them. ; )





I’m quoting Pat Hetic here. Kiwi is the word. : D
(If you have no clue what I’m talking about see Bonnie’s previous post.)


Mom and Dad.



Is that Peter taking MY picture!!?

Ok…I could go on for, um, a very long time with shots from that day but, I shall restrain myself due several factors

a. I have limited online photo storage
b. my time is limited at the WiFi
c. it would look odd to post all 300 pictures
d. my dial-up readers would disown me
e. the moon might turn into cheddar cheese of a very sharp flavor

*clears throat*

Moving on.

The picture of Bonnie with her hollandaise sauce at the Bailey‘s house!



One night last week we sang with the Bailey’s at a nursing home.





Joshua is 16, Nathan is 14 and Susanna is 12. I don’t know how old their mom is. :P I really enjoyed listening to them play and sing. Vincent is going to lay down, perhaps tomorrow, some banjo tracks for their new instrumental CD featuring three of their boys playing mandolin, guitar and bass. Bonnie and I contributing in the photography and graphic design department. I’m learning more about Corel and thinking how nice Photoshop would be. *remembers that’s on the ’to buy’ list*

We had some rousing games of foosball….



Though foosball is interesting I still prefer air hockey and basically because, I’m more likely to win. ;D

Our days with the Bailey’s came to a close on Tuesday morning. We headed south for a after school program in the afternoon. From the after school program we started our trek into ‘the valley’. “The valley” is basically the place Texans and other snowbirds winter. They have tons of RV parks and lots of people to sing to, so we were told. Dad thought we should go down and do personal cold calling. Turns out we had a very productive time visiting pastors, church, and RV parks! We should be all set for contacts next year! We’re about 10 miles or less from Mexico and it’s warm! It hit 80 and we had the AC on. This bus heats up fast with all these black windows! One of the last pastors we talked to told us about this island and gave us a name of the RV park.

We arrived at the park right in time to check in and have been here all day. I would like to say we had a wonderful time down near the water and while we did have a good time it wouldn’t be entirely true. The red warning flags were up for dangerous currents and the wind was ferocious. I took the camera down to the water the first time and didn’t snap more than two three pictures. I was afraid the sand would sandblast my lens. Hannah said ’I’ve had enough’ after about 15-20 minutes fighting with the blowing sand! The boys stayed out during most of the wind digging pits and wading. In the afternoon it calmed down a little and a few of us went walking up the beach. We saw a jellyfish with a pink design but I had left the camera in the bus.

The WiFi here is not the greatest. It’s extremely intermittent and you have to be on the sidewalk to make it work and even then it’s iffy and sometimes VERY slow, like 1.0 and 2.0 mbps slow. So, this won’t get posted until we get to somewhere a little more stable.

And, lol, I almost forgot…pictures!

Daniel got buried later in the afternoon.



Washing off…and uh, swimming?



I took this picture from the from window in the bus early in the afternoon.



I know it’s hard to see but isn’t that a cool ship!?



Da beach.

The sand was soft, when it wasn’t being blown by the wind and the water was actually warm later in the afternoon. I think dad said it was 68 degrees f, much warmer then it ever gets in the north!

So in case anyone is wondering where this island is it’s pretty much the most southern tip of Texas. I checked a map and we’re almost the same latitude as the Keys. 8-) The water is so pretty, a beautiful aqua color in spots and a nice blue shade in the deeper areas. I was on the sidewalk getting WiFi on and off and enjoying seeing the sun set behind the palms and the gulf on the other side. God’s creation is marvelous!


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We’re at the studio right now. It’s a little building with ac. Yep, isn’t warm enough for ac. J

Vincent and Josh warming up respectively.





The CD will be done sometime in the next few months, we hope. We’re getting an autographed copy.
:-D
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Time: Sunday afternoon
Place: A road in Texas head northeast
Listening to: Bonnie picking and road noise (bumps in the road!)

We left the Bailey’s house for yet another year this morning. We spent Saturday at their house and Bonnie made pizza! We haven’t made pizza since we left 6 weeks ago. It sure tasted good.



Hannah and Susanna’s new puppy, Alex, got along quite well. We took it on a walk and ended up carrying her around. : p But, she was sooo cute, when she wasn’t biting us. LOL


The Baileys.

We sang this morning and now we’re headed outta Texas!! Looks like the WiFi I thought we might have this afternoon isn’t going to materialize! I’ll post this when I can.

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And that brings us to today. It’s lovely weather again and home is just three weeks away! Those four letters sound so sweet.