It Snowed!!!

There was snow on the ground when I woke up this morning! However, by lunch there was nothing left. That leaves us cold, wet, and miserable! Okay, not miserable, but I can easily think of other situations I would rather be in! I will not let this weather get me down though!Just think spring will be here before too long! With it will come all the garden work, but I love that.

How Forgetful I Am!!!

I can't believe I forgot to mention Saturday night in my last post! Yet it seems so long ago. Oh well! We actually met Roland White!!! He is an awesome mandolin picker, and he's played with some REALLY BIG names! He came with the band Richard Starkey and Friends. Unfortunately there were enough sandwich orders to keep me in the kitchen almost the whole time, but I did speak to him a minute when we bought one of his Cd's! It was really exciting to see a famous man come into the restaurant when you've only seen him on the front of your lesson book and on the internet!

SPBGMA

I was just checking out the nominees for this year's national SPBGMA event in Nashville. Rhonda Vincent has so many nominations she can't help but walk away with several awards! She's got: songwriter, album, female vocalist (in the contemporary category), and the list goes on! Sometimes I wonder if bluegrass is so small that there really wasn't anybody else to nominate, but I know that can't be true. I am not a big Rhonda Vincent fan; I'm just not. You know how you can like or dislike something for no apparent reason; that is kind of how it is. I guess I have learned to appreciate a more traditional sound. Looking at the vocal group of the year I don't know all of them, but I see that Cherryholmes is still big (I have not heard enough of their stuff to form an opinion), predominately female groups (or groups with women leaders) are popular. Of course I would be the odd one, but I like the two that are all men (I think). Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver are GREAT! I have a CD of Mountain Heart and I like their sound, REALLY FAST! Anyway I would like to see: The Gibson Brothers "Red Letter Day" win the album of the year, gotta hope for Ronnie McCoury in the mandolin category, female vocalist-contemporary is difficult (don't listen to that stuff much) nope not gonna do it I'm not educated enough to form an opinion on this one, I'm not too sure of myself on the female-traditional either, I don't know about the male-contemporary maybe Ronnie Bowman maybe Terry Eldredge, Del McCoury or Larry Sparks for male-traditional, Gospel-contemporary I don't know any but the Isaacs and Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver so I'm hoping for the latter, Gospel-traditional again I just know Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver but BlueRidge has a good name, I'm hoping Mountain Heart will win vocal group, instrumental group would be the Grascals although Ricky Scaggs and Kentucky Thunder is good too, song of the year is again "Red Letter Day" by the Gibson Brothers, and I have no clue as to the last two categories. There. I've had my say.

On the Road to Recovery

We hope! Luke's been well for days now, and bouncing off the walls! Kyle is well off and on. Mama is pretty much well, but trying to shake a headache. Claire seems to have gotten this thing worse than the rest of us, and she is pretty laid up, but better I think. I am doing way better! Unfortunately, Daddy is down with it now.

Yesterday is the perfect example of those days when everything you planned goes out the window. At first Kyle wasn't going to go to the birthday party, but then Mama and Daddy decided he could go, since he is practically well. So Mama took Kyle, Luke, and the desserts for the Pickn' Parlor. She dropped Kyle off at the party, and took Luke and the desserts to the Pickn' Parlor. Claire and I were at home. Claire was resting and I was working on putting in an invisible zipper, still haven't got that thing in. Daddy came home looking awful! He went directly to bed, but only stayed there for about an hour. Then our plan to stay home tonight, and not work blew up. Daddy said we were leaving in twenty minutes with Elijah and Mrs. Brothers. Uncle Craig was unable to be there so we had to pick up the slack. Thankfully we had a lady who worked as head chef kind of. She was GREAT! One couple who were not going to work any more came in ready to help. We had a rather hectic kitchen, but it was a happy one. Kaliste and Mr. Lovett came in too! Kaliste discovered our delightful sink! Thank you so much; we can always use another dishwasher! The night was thankfully slower than a normal Friday night, but I think we filled up close to our usual amount. We were beat when we got home, but it was a good night.

Everytime We Think We Get Better...

We get worse! How much worse can it get?!?

MORE!!!

Daddy is coughing a bit now, but he said he doesn't have the fever. Wednesday night Claire's fever came back up, and now she has some sort of stomach thing.

Yesterday we watched "Lord of the Rings", but (I'm rather afraid of the comments this will bring) we skipped through most of the scenes with Frodo and Sam after they left the Fellowship. After viewing it again, I hold to my original favorite part: The Battle of Pelennor Fields after Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli arrive with the Dwimorberg-ians (I am not a LOTR "scholar", and I only know all this because the little booklet is in front of me. I usually just call it the battle of the dead).

And It Keeps Going...

I've got it now. However, Claire is well enough to go to lessons today; Mama is over it now too, I think. Who knows about Daddy! Being in an office all day may keep this away from him. The Brothers have moved back out to their camp, and the house is very quiet. Luke is still not back to normal, so that makes the house just that much more quiet. He, we found out yesterday, has a bad ear infection. We are all hoping and praying it doesn't spread to the rest of us.

Sickness in the house!

This week the inhabitants of Allelon Farm have been sick. Not many of us have managed to escape the persistent fever, chesty cough, and congestion; probably fewer of us will. Right now everyone is sick except: Daddy, Mr. Brothers, Mrs. Brothers, Benjamin, Lydia, Elizabeth, and me. That is half of us, but we thought the babies were sick yesterday. We would really appreciate your prayers as we try to get everyone well again.

The Eighth of January

Several things of note happened on this date. In 1815, Major General Andrew Jackson led a small army to victory against the British in New Orleans (I think it was the day after peace papers were signed). In 1935, Elvis Presley and his stillborn twin brother were born in a two-room house in Mississippi. In 1993, Claire was born. The Eighth of January is also an old fiddle tune that Johnny Horton put the words of "The Battle of new Orleans" to.

Obviously, Major General Andrew Jackson.

In case you couldn't guess Elvis is the one in the center.

Claire.

Barber Claire.

Working Claire.

A portrait trial.

Claire dancing with Kyle, her partner.

Just a Note

How on earth do you write a truly thankful, perfectly honest thank you note to someone who has given you something you don't particularly like? I find it one of the most difficult things.

Sorry!

Will post soon.

Just In Time For Christmas

Mama, Claire, and I worked on a couple of dresses for some girls at church, and we gave the dresses to them this morning. I hope we surprised them! Thank you for the picture, Mrs. Stouffer! You look lovely as usual, Camille!








Merry Christmas, Y'all!

Guess What, Kaliste!

I finished them! I'll bring them tomorrow! I didn't think I'd get them done before New Year's Day!

"I Can't Believe It's Christmas..."

Busy! That is the only word that can possibly describe the time we are going through! The amazing thing is that not very much of it is at all related to Christmas as it would have been in years past! This Christmas is so different that it hardly even feels like Christmas! However, that may have something to do with the 60 and 70 degree weather we have been having lately. Never thought I'd miss the 40 degree, drippy weather, but there's nothing like that to get you in the mood! We've done the traditional things such as: watching every Christmas movie in the house, listening to all our Christmas CDs (Mama has finally proclaimed our holiday music selection lousy; maybe now we'll get some good Christmas music.), and decorating the Christmas tree with a finger food dinner that night. Still, it is like we're in "A Charlie Brown Christmas"! Isn't it still October? Guess I'll have to get used to this hectic, non-stop feeling, but now at least we don't have the Pick'n Parlor this week end and Mr. Brantley has let us off for a couple of weeks for Christmas break. He gave me quite a bit to work on between now and the next lesson though.

Funny... mostly

Much of this website is funny, but some of it is too real.

Don't you hate it when...

You didn't get to bed until 1:30 am, and you have to get up in the morning.

Siblings loose your things.

You can't remember what you were about to say.

You get the brunt of a parent's anger even when you did nothing wrong.

It's bathroom cleaning day.

It's your week to fix breakfast/lunch/dinner and you can't come up with any ideas.

You've just sewn up three out of the four seams wrong.

It's portrait time.

You don't get anything done although it seems like you've been busy all day.

You have to dance with another girl even though there are perfectly capable boys standing around.

Your music teacher forces a smile and says "Well, that was... nice." or "Good try."

Your father automatically asks if we're having spaghetti because he knows it's your week to fix dinner.

Your room is an absolute wreck.

You have great aspirations for the coming year but rather low expectations as to how those aspirations will turn out.

Good friends pass up your road.

People don't blog for months on end.

Someone makes a list like this.

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I could go on, but I don't think I will right now.

Blogger Beta?

Yeah. I changed to it when it asked me to, but why? I had just over 50 posts when it asked me if I wanted to change. Is Blogger Beta able to handle larger blogs better? What really is a large blog? What am I doing here!?! I've got way too many things to do!

The Pick'n Parlor

Last night was opening night for this new enterprise we're working on. We had a packed house too! The Pick'n Parlor is an experiment really. We are leasing the building and things from the previous operators so we didn't really have to start from scratch. Uncle Craig is head manager and chef; Daddy is another head manager chef; Uncle Craig hired four waiters who were absolute lifesavers last night; I mainly did dishes (I've never done so many dishes in my life- okay, maybe my whole life's-worth combined); Mama and Claire helped do the dishes some too. After about an hour of dish washing I started wondering how many times I had washed this fork or that bowl, etc. I am still wondering. The major crisis of the night was that we nearly ran out of utensils (we actually may have I'm not sure). Uncle Craig decided that a meat-n-three place uses more utensils than a soup and sandwich place. I have already learned to appreciate the people in the back more through just last night's work.

I am going to start taking mandolin lessons from Claire's fiddle teacher and the national fiddle champion, Tom Brantley!

Today Claire, Kyle, and I are going to go dancing at this event, in full costume! We are going from there to the Pick'n Parlor for another night of work.

A New Farm Experience

I finally got that farm experience I have wondered about ever since we have had cows. I helped Kyle and Daddy pull a calf this morning! Okay, so that normally is not a good thing, but I think it was very educational. Made all the more so by the 15 degree weather! We should have tagged the little thing when we were able to catch it, but Daddy was afraid that it would not even live. Now the calf is very much alive and sort of even bouncing around a little. Perhaps we will still be able to catch it; I think we will if it turns out to be as friendly as its mother (we are all hoping it will be)! Our 47 is going to be a good mother I think, though perhaps not as protective as our other cows. I have already been able to go up and touch 47 as well as her calf without any opposition! With our others you could not even go near the calf without the cow coming after you.

YIKES! It's Already December?!!