Happinessprinciple: String Break May 3, 2008

Well, we made it to String Break http://www.myspace.com/stringbreak

and back and we had a great time! Last year it was really cold and rainy so we were a little worried to take the girls out camping if the weather would be horrible. But, to our best luck, the weather was fine.

We were outside of Newton for the event and arrived about 1:00 pm. John had gone out the night before and set up the tent. He put us in a perfect place, close enough to the stage, right by a bathroom...These girls love to be outside and they were so excited to get to hear Daddy play in a couple of bands!

Cousin Julian came with us too. He is a huge fan of rock'n'roll, especially Split Lip Rayfield!

They were hungry the minute we got there and started munching on chips.

Then they figured out that huge turkey legs were being sold and they had to have one. They ate on those things for about an hour and finally laid them down and never went back. What a meal!

John played with the Kit Craig Quartet about 2:00 and it was nice slower music with Kit playing his sax. John said he had not played jazz since high school and somebody came by while he was playing and said "John must be going nuts and just want to rock out on those drums..." They of course, have not known John as long as I have...he liked playing jazz again. But he said he was nervous, I have no idea why.

Hannah played a little show of her own.

Our tent became the kids tent where they jumped like crazy on the air mattress and ran around. Kids that we didn't know well saw how much fun they were having and decided to join them, that lasted a couple of hours at least. Until one by one they started getting hurt. When the big kids came in and started bouncing really hard those little one could not keep up. One hurt his chin, another hurt her head. So we had to bring it down a notch...

These kids are so cool.

As the day began to fade, we knew some dancing was coming down the line. Our friend, Lucy was showing Hannah a few moves, although Hannah was feeling a little shy at first. Ella and Hannah did dance one time with me, when John's other band Hatteberg's Peephole http://www.myspace.com/hattebergspeephole played their favorite car song: Bloody Red Baron from the Royal Guardsmen. It's about snoopy, they say.

There were a few scary things that happened as it started to get dark. The parents started tracking down their kids and a few took way too long to find them. They would come by and ask if we'd seen a certain kid. That freaked me out a little.

As John finished his set with Jon E, up walked a man holding a kid wrapped in a big sweatshirt. He went up to Jon E. and asked "Is this your kid?" and although their set was over, the tone changed a little. Jon E's son who is 3 years old, fell into a small body of water and was covered in mud and water. Luckily someone saw him because he panicked when he fell in face first and was close to a much bigger accident. It was a case of one parent thinking the other was watching, or something...scary though. I won't Ella and Hannah out of my sight. That turns out to be a big job when we're out like that. But I really do not trust anyone. Even though I may want to have fun, I have a bigger job to do to keep those kids safe. I do have fun anyway, but it is different than when we did not have a care in the world.

When it started getting dark, we had the kids start bundling up. Poor Maddie, she has had a ear infection and is taking an antibiotic. But she did not want to miss this event so I made extra special warmth accommodations for her. She was a little annoyed...The kiddos went to sleep, late for them, I think it was about 11pm. They were tired though and they slept through like 5 bands!

We all made it through the night. I had a difficult time getting to sleep because I was freezing. John poked me once and said "What are you doing?" Like I was really up to something shaking from head to toe...so he gave me more blankets and tried to help out but it took me probably two hours to be warm enough to relax.

Everybody woke up happy and ran around a little. No one loved the port-o-potty experiences but they did have one potty that was family sized so we could all go in together. The girls would wait so long to go (because it was gross) that when they could not hold it anymore, we'd have to make mad dashes for the restroom. Fun, fun.