We made it to NY and our first concert! PTL. Dad is feeling ok. His back is hurting pretty bad right now and he’s debating whether or not to take his pain meds tonight and not sleep or not to take them and sleep (maybe) . He still had a fever/chills and was feeling sick to his stomach this afternoon. Thank you everyone for your prayers, calls and concern.

If you could also remember Nathan. He’s not doing well either. He’s got a headache, clammy hands, and a fever. We don’t know exactly what is going on with him. If it’s catchy pray the rest of us don’t get it. J Bonnie did a nice job filling in for him on his vocal parts. He did play the bass but he really didn’t look good.

The concert went fine. We had about 90 people in the gym here at the church. It was fun because we had to pull in about 20-30 minutes of ‘new’ old songs. We had a little time rehearse some of the songs earlier in the afternoon which was nice.

Well, I’m out behind the gym here and the bus is over around the corner. Hopefully the bugs won’t find me for a while.

God bless.

Dad is doing....a little better! PTL!

Thank you all for your prayers and support. Dad’s fever broke last night and he was able to sleep. He woke up feeling hungry, which is terrific. The a-fib is gone too. PTL! The fever is back this morning so he’s still taking it very easy and trying not to move around too much. Lord willing we’re leaving after 1pm. Maybe mom will be doing the highway driving, I don’t know! Please pray for strength and continued healing.

I’ll try to give some updates this weekend but I have no guarantee of wireless.

Thanks again for all your prayers. God bless.

Prayer request update

I wish I had better news to report. Dad seems to be doing a little worse in my estimation. He’s in a lot of distress and pain right now. His digestive system seriously is not working. He was up until 3am with pain. I don’t know how much sleep he got. His heart is in a-fib, which is making him weak. Please pray for his recovery and that the Lord’s will would be done this weekend as we have several concert in the NY area. At this point our driver is incapacitated. Thank you for your prayers!

….Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26 NIV

This is my 277th post. My random note of the day for you all. : )

This weekend was so busy. And, it was kinda busy today, too. We had unexpected, but very welcome, visit from Mr. Wid, followed by a birthday party for Hannah. I got home about an hour ago from work. (Longer now since this post is taking so long. lol) A nice quiet day is scheduled for tomorrow. : )

So starting our busy weekend was a concert in the park here in Orange. We had the MOST horrible technical problems. Why, oh WHY, must all our worst concerts be done in our home town?!! We had a lot of nice positive response. Folks were really nice about it. Turns out the fiber optic cable was bad but we didn’t figure that out until the middle of concert. Oh wellll…..





We left right after I was done at work we shipped off to Surry, NH. We parked in the church parking lot and the sun was shining and it was raining. It was an interesting combination which lead to this lovely rainbow. I stitched two photos together to get this.



Ok, this is a silly photo, but I though I’d share what my laptop looks like at night. lol I should send it in to the shop and get the screen cleaned. : P Since the cd drive is broken I really should send it in ASAP but….I haven’t gotten networked with Bonnie to save all my data (PHOTOS!) to Bonnie’s laptop. It sure wasn’t convenient that my external hard drive broke, too, otherwise I could transfer them to that. Anyway….



Next morning we sang under this tent.



The tent turned everyone blue…including Billy and Paula Speer.



This is what I might look like if you catch me concentrating really hard.



Bonnie’s getting sneaky with the camera. : P

We left and headed home..

Mt. Monadnock was beautiful…



I did a very poor job photographing from a moving vehicle, plus the power lines I cut didn’t help. Actually, I could have cloned them out but I’m trying to get this post finished not spend the next 2 years of my life editing photos….. : P

Sunday we had really nice time at Pilgrim Pines! We arrived in plenty of time and eat supper with them. It was pizza again, Sarah! : D

Bonnie’s yodeling brought the house down. Thankfully not literally because then we wouldn’t have been able to sing the encore. Mr. and Mrs. M came and so did Bonnie’s friend from the bluegrass forum. They traveled 90 miles just to hear us. :shocked: I shouldn’t be impressed after we’ve had folks travel 6 hours …however, anyone traveling to see us still amazes me.

Hannah’s birthday day Saturday but we celebrated today because there wasn’t really too much time to prepare for one Saturday.



She’s 8! Sprouting up like a weed and growing up too fast. *sigh* The baby isn’t a baby anymore!



Well, I guess I’m off….cheerio, mates!

Hehe. I have like two or three emails to write, pictures to resize, notes to reply to and I decide I’d better blog. : P I mean what’s the point of being back if I’m not gonna blog, right?

If you want to hear some really high screaming, uh, I mean singing, check out this.

Announcing further notice! :) (Stop groaning. I hope you all enjoyed the break. : P )

**Warning** Long, picture heavy, post coming up.

Thanks to all my faithful (and unfaithful) readers for your patience and checking back to see if I was ever going to start again. Lots of things have happened between the 15th of last month and today but I’m not going to recount them here and now. Bonnie and Vincent did a nice job covering all the important happenings, like meeting the Plourd family, Peter and Matthew’s birthdays and the family reunion in NY.

Our singing schedule has been fairly busy and is going to get busier. Every weekend is booked until September. We’re in Maine as I’m typing this, though I won’t post until we’re home on Tuesday. I almost didn’t bring my laptop on this trip but because I planned on taking lots of pictures I knew I’d need a place to dump them. I thought myself very mature not to bounce all around like a Tigger and then glue myself to the laptop when I saw Panaras Bread store this morning. (That bouncing around like a Tigger sure sounds interesting, eh?. : P) I didn’t even take it out to check if the reception was good. :D Aren’t you all proud of me?! : P

We started out on this trip on Thursday at a healthcare center in NH. For all the Bartletts reading, we remember Ed and Ruby B. being ‘groupies’ there a few years ago. They had just met us a week or two before but traveled all the way from Gilmanton IW, NH to hear us again. It’s been so nice to get to know you all better this year and meet the ND part of your family! And, it’s been a pleasure to know Betty and Mart and your other friends through your introduction! See y’all in August, Lord willing!

Friday we stopped and saw Mt. Katadin from a distance. It was beautiful!





Don’t let me go, Mom!



Random pic of Hannah.



Did you see that!!??

When we arrived at Fort Fairfield mom, Bonnie and I took a walk on an ATV trail that ran next to the water.



Kinda pretty, no?



Turns out my feet weren’t use to the shoes I had on and got blisters on the tops of my feet before we were half way through the hour. I took my flip flops off and then the bottoms of my feet blistered from the rocks! I guess I couldn’t win that day. LOL. I don’t know when I was ever so glad to feel pavement again!

When we returned Bonnie and I *hushed whisper* joined the Mafia. Oh. Wait. We PLAYED Mafia. That sounds better. : P





We also passed the time with Bolo. Someone at our first stop of this trip gave it to us.



Oh, and the sunset was beautiful that evening….


My gorgeous sister, Bonnie, washed in light. :) (I used a flash. : P)



We play in the Country Gospel Festival in Fort Fairfield, ME on Saturday. Our turn at the festival didn’t come until the end of the day so we had all day to goof off. Haha. After we set our sound system up we were relatively ‘free’ though Dad ran the sound for half the groups and Bonnie did a good amount of helping dad fix problems. We hung out with the Dennys, LaClaries, and their friends the remainder of the time.

The kids got along well and played Mafia together….



Then they found an empty field to jam in…



Mrs. LaClaire playing a ‘bass?’



There were a lot of groups playing that day and I got shots of all of them except two.



LaClaires


Dennys



LOOK AT THE SMILES ON THEM!!! :D



Annie Charles



High Meadow



Glory Bound

I am EXREMELY disappointed with the Fuji. AHHH! I’ve got to double check this but apparently Fuji doesn’t have any image stabilizer and that is soooo not cool. A piece is missing from my tripod or I would have tried some self timer shots to see if the image stabilizer was the problem. Apparently, the Fuji looks impressive because the news reporter wanted photos from me. I hope I’ve got some good ones for her.

So when we were up doing our set my d string totally unwound before we ended Brethren We Have Met. I grabbed my tuner and started blabbing something like ’my d string just unwound, I guess you never know what’s going to come up!’ While I was winding it back a big ole dog ran up on stage and distracted everyone while I got in tune. :D That was nice! I think Mrs. Denny got a picture, with her Rebel (!), but I don’t have it yet.


We hung out with the Denny, Chick, and Barton families after the festival. Mrs. B made us soup and we had ice cream after. :)



Dad, praying.



Note his nice little sound thrower. :D

Mom! THE ice cream lady.



After supper, while the boys wrestled, us girls had a deep conversation about how Kayla C. looked like someone I knew, but could figure out who. Lol Ok, we talked about other things, too! It was great fun and we’re looking forward to seeing you all again in September, Lord willing!

The ladies.


The men.


It would have been fun to get a really big group pic but you know how hard it is to round up everyone.

Our two concerts Sunday went fine. Bonnie’s ‘Mommy’ song continues to be requested in recorded form.

This afternoon at the concert I felt so listless, the humidity must be getting to me. : P

I’ve got a prayer request for dad, who hasn’t been feeling well at all. He’s said things like ‘I feel like I have the flu’ and ‘I feel like I’ve been run over by a semi truck, or two.’ His auto immune problem is flaring up along with digestive problems, which makes him lose weight, about a pound a week. He has sore spots and is ’ambling’ around in pain. Thank you for praying for him if you think of him.

I’ll leave you with a verse that has come up for me a lot recently found in Romans 12:2,

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will.”