The Wreckers

I have been looking forward to this day all month. My favorite country singers, The Wreckers, are coming to the Eagle Knoll Winery and I'm helping with sound and lights!! It's Ric's show but he's using a bunch of our speakers and racks as well as Rob's expertise and we're setting up front and back truss with lights. This is also the last day of Nampa Nights. This thought puts a small damper on my day because I enjoy Nampa Nights and it's nice to have a regular, consistent, weekly paycheck for a change. Anyway. . . working with Ric is great- he hires loaders!! We have 6 strapping men to unload the trucks and put things where they go.

Rob and Dale aren't used to taking it easy like this, but I think we could all get used to it.
Our truck and Ric's truck both had to be completely and quickly unloaded before the buses rolled in with The Wreckers and their stuff.

I admit, I coveted just a little bit when I compared what I have:

. . . To what they have:

It was only a momentary set-back, though, since I've never been one to wish for fame and fortune. I had a friend in high school that wanted to be famous so bad, she just couldn't understand why I didn't find it appealing. Back to the set-up. . . . The group brought two buses with a loaded trailer on each and everything is expected to fit on this little stage:

For all their fame and fortune, you'd think they could afford some nicer cases. . .

It took a couple of hours, but they managed to fit everything onto the stage:

The set list:

Meanwhile, Gloria was tired of waiting for the girls to show their faces and was sure she was going to starve to death before the vendors were ready to serve:

With all of the extra help, it was a pretty easy set-up. Dale took off at 2:00 for Nampa Nights and Rob put finishing touches on the sound and lights:

I'm sure Rob had a few covetous moments himself at this beautiful, rented sound board:

It was a sold-out crowd:

Ric's wife, Debbie, brought us a picnic dinner complete with plums and brownies for dessert. Gloria had a great time hanging out with her. They scored a bunch of Wreckers tattoos and had fun plastering them on each other.

Debbie:

THE WRECKERS!!!!!!!!!!!

Gloria knows most of their songs and was very happy to be so close to the girls. She was more than a little disappointed, however, to see them smoking and drinking during their short break:

It was a great concert and the crowd was thrilled:

Gloria, singing along:

Rob had a good time running the lights and working with the Wreckers front-of-house tech:

Time to take it all down. . . .

My favorite song by The Wreckers is My Oh My:

(It's also my cell phone ringer!!)

"My, Oh My"

This concrete road used to just be dirt
We'd drive out here after work
Every Friday night when I was eighteen

This parking lot used to be a field
I parked here in my Oldsmobile
Long before the Sonic and the Walgreens

Not no more
Not no more
My, oh my
Look how the time flies
Look how the world changes
In the blink of an eye
My, oh my
Look how the years have flown
Turning around before you know it
Up and gone
Oh my, oh my, oh my

Times have changed and so have I
I once was young and starry-eyed
Now I have these bittersweet memories

Songs were long and gas was cheap
No cell phones and water was free
Daddy paid and I never had to worry

Not no more
Not no more
My, oh my
Look how the time flies
Look how the world changes
In the blink of an eye
My, oh my
Look how the years have flown
Turning around before you know it
Up and gone
Oh my, oh my, oh my

Plan, What Plan??

As much as I'd like to think I have some kind of control over my plan, I don't. School went OK but I was distracted by my "Church Responsibilities Plan" so my "School Plan" got a little off-kilter. I still got to the shop around 3-ish but my "Be-At-Peak-Proficiency-At-Work Plan" was completely destroyed when I walked in the door. Rob needed help with the little cases-they needed to be foamed and delivered before 4:30 AND the Egyptian had called and we needed to add a stage deck to cover the organ pit (probably not the right term!) sometime before a concert on Thursday. I had a quizzing meeting at the church at 7:00 and Dale had a meeting and was unavailable to help, so we had a very small window of opportunity to accomplish these things. I put my plan on the back burner and helped Rob. The cases were delivered by 4:15 and we headed over to the Egyptian. When Rob and Dale installed the stage last week, they ran out of time and did not put a deck over the organ. They knew this deck would have to be taller and that special legs would have to be cut and they'd have to figure out a way to clamp it tightly
to. . . something. In this picture you can see the 4 poles sticking up that the stage deck will be lowered onto. In between these four poles is a very large organ so there is very little room to maneuver. Rob and an Egyptian employee set the deck on the poles while I crawled around underneath and stuck the poles into the slot under each corner of the stage deck. I got seriously claustrophobic.

If you zoom in on this picture, you can see Rob's head peeking up under the deck addition. He's clamping it together with ratchet straps and when he finished, the deck felt just as strong and stable as the rest of the stage. We still have several more additions to this project, but we'll take it one show at a time.

Back at the shop, I had last minute touches to put on my quizzing info for the meeting but I still made it to the church on time. The "informational" meeting was kind of a bust with only the people who have already been very involved in quizzing showing up. It was discouraging.

Back to the shop to prep for a Thursday show. So much for my "Always-leave-the-shop-by 9:00 Plan". These are the days that I'm very thankful my kiddos are night owls:

We left the shop by 1:00 a.m. all prepped and ready for tomorrows shows.

I Love Math. . .

Today didn't go exactly as I'd planned but better than I'd hoped. Gloria's books haven't arrived yet, so I pulled a bunch of workbooks out of my extensive collection of homeschooling stuff in each subject so she could start school yesterday. One of the books was on multiplication and utilized cute cartoon characters to teach the concepts. I knew Gloria would enjoy this because math is one of the (few) subjects she hasn't balked at and she totally got into it!! When we were through, she set up a grid and found some counters and continued to explore this new world of fascinating number pairs on her own. All the while she kept repeating, "I love multiplication! I love school"!

She continued to teach herself the multiplication tables off and on all day. When Rob got home from work the first thing she said was, "Hey dad, I'm a math person like mom." This thrilled me on so many levels! I have always loved math. I remember when I learned long division and I would spend hours dividing bigger and bigger numbers into each other. I am not ashamed to say that in Jr. High I was in math club. It was a big deal and we competed against other schools. We were good! I especially enjoyed teaching Zach Algebra last year. I get so excited at the prospect of finding out what x is. The more numbers and letters involved, the better. And plotting x and y on a graph?? Don't even get me started! Zach is good at math, but he scoffs at my excitement. Algebra 2 will be more of a challenge for us both this year, but I think I'm up to the task.

I went to the shop as planned at 3-ish and accomplished quite a bit while I was there. The place has been an absolute disaster all summer so I spent some time organizing and cleaning and then helped Rob over at the other shop. The cases he's working on now have been the bane of our existence over the last year and a half. We took on an order for 200 of these small cases for a local flight company and they have been much more time consuming than we ever imagined. They take them in lots of 10-20 at a time and we need to get them delivered pretty quickly when they call.

They needed 20 last week so we're trying to get them together as quickly as possible. Although my "plan" says I need to leave the shop every night by 9:00, we were there until almost 11:00. :( But we finished 10 of them.

Zach will have a ton of required reading to do this year so he'll be doing a lot of it in the evenings. Luckily, he doesn't mind reading. The books he's reading this week are Peace Child, by Don Richardson (a book about head hunting canibals in New Guinea) and A Thousand Trails, by Hugh Steven (The personal journal of William Cameron Townsend, Founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators). I'm hoping to read along with him this year, but I'm not sure when I'll fit it in. . .

(Those Captain Underpants books next to him in the chair are NOT required reading. I don't even want to know why they're there.)

Rambling

School starts tomorrow. Summer went by so quickly but I'm glad it's over. I've been craving a routine. I've made my lists and charts and my "Grand Plan" and now I'm ready to jump in with both feet. Problem is, I'm the only one in my family that feels this way. I'm well aware that it won't look like I'd like it to look for (at least) two reasons: 1. Life is messy and 2. Owning a business comes with a large amount of unpredictability. Besides the fact that we are all night owls and it is very difficult to shift into earlier hours. Been there done that. Rob will keep the same hours- roughly 10 a.m. to midnight for work, in bed by 2. I'll consider myself lucky if the kids are in bed each night by midnight so Zach can start school by 9 a.m. and Gloria can start by 10 a.m. It really wouldn't matter what time they started IF I didn't have afternoon responsibilities. My "plan" is to leave the house everyday by 3:00 p.m. to go to the shop so I won't fall any further behind than I already am. Besides that, my "school brain" turns off at 3:00. I feel sorry for kids who learn all day and then have to come home to hours and hours of homework. I know I did it in school and survived it, but my brain turns to mush after 7 hours of schoolwork. It could be that I'm constantly transitioning between lower grade work and middle to highschool work. Beginning times tables one minute, algebraic operations with Scientific Notation the next. Anyway, I'm excited for the new school year and I'm determined to give it my best shot and to keep distractions to a minimum. Wish me luck. . . .

More Birthday!

Sunday morning at church we had a farewell celebration for Dr. Susie Dillon. I've known Susie for over 10 years but I really didn't have a chance to get to know her well. I know she was always a great encouragement to me when it came to music. She let me know just about every time Rob and I led music that she appreciated it. I could always count on her to sit in the same place- 3rd row from the back, aisle seat, left side as you look out from the front- with a smile of encouragement for me. She is starting a new adventure in Alaska with something like 12 dogs. She will be missed.

Later in the afternoon we went to Storey Park for another birthday party for Zach. Jeanie made him a Star Wars cake with an entire wheat-less section. (Although we try to avoid wheat and other things due to his food allergies, he has mostly decided an occasional stomach ache is a small price to pay for getting to feel full. Poor kid.)

This is a picture my mom took in this same park for Zach's birthday last year. He and Kelsey have always been pretty close to the same height:

This year, it looks like Zach has passed her up!!

The last couple of family get-togethers, Rob has been picking Tony's brain about building a stage trailer. Now that our stage is out of commission for the next several months, Rob is planning to build a stage on a trailer and Tony is an expert welder and Trailer-builder (I'm pretty sure that's not the correct term, but it will have to do!)

More stuff to clutter up my house!!! Actually, most of the stuff he got, he'll either wear, build to display or store in his DS.

Cody lit the candles on the cake:

The girls played on the playground:

And Rob tortured Kelsey:

In my de-cluttering over the summer, I found several things to give to my littlest niece. One of those things was an electronic book that allows the "reader" to make up a story with the push of a button. We acquired this great toy when Zach was about two and both kids have enjoyed it immensely over the years. Since it had been in the bottom of a toy box for the last few years, I asked Zach (whose name is on it claiming ownership) if I could give it to his cousin. He was happy for her to have it. Gloria, on the other hand, was shocked and appalled that I would give it away. It's funny how she can be so grown-up and responsible one minute and then, suddenly, she's a little girl with a grudge:

It was one of those difficult mother moments because we want our children to be happy (sometimes at any cost) but I knew this toy would not be played with at our house and it needed a new home where it would be put to good use. I stood my ground. She got over it. I wish I would do that more often.

My Grand Plan

I have spent as many free moments this summer as possible simplifying my life. I'm so tired of taking care of stuff. I want to free my life of stuff so I can enjoy people. I want to play games with my kids in the evening, not pick up clothes and toys on the floor. I know cooking, dishes and laundry are chores I probably can't avoid, but I can make my other chores easier by not having so much stuff to take care of. The last few days have been my last ditch effort to get myself prepared for the routine I'll need to have in place once school starts. I have finally dug out the "family room". This room has been a daycare, a case-building warehouse, a storage unit and a newlywed apartment. I've been preparing it to be a playroom, a school room, an art room, and a library. I have mostly taken all unnecessary objects out of the inside of my house and tried to find them a home in the family room (or in the yard sale pile) so that when I come home at the end of a long day, I can walk into a clean house. I can always shut the door on the playroom. I am also employing Zach to be my housekeeper for the winter. He's a great helper when I give him a list (and a little cash) so I'm going to take advantage of his work ethic and even give him a high school credit in home-ec to boot.

I've also been working on my latest "Grand Plan". I have always been a planner and a list maker but the last few years of starting this business have almost caused me to throw in the towel on ever being organized. But, having a plan gives me hope. I have outlined my church responsibilities and made a to do list of thing that need to be accomplished in each area; I made a September calendar for work detailing events, the hours I can work (too many), the things I need to do each day so I can be at peak proficiency, and days that I will be unavailable due to prior commitments (like Ladies Craft Night at church!!); I opened a box of school books that came in the mail and lined out the kid's schedule for the next 12 weeks as well as all of Zach's assignments for the first two weeks of school; AND I made a to do list of things that must be accomplished this week in order for everything else to fall into place!!!!! Whew! I feel like I've definitely accomplished something even though I still have lots of loose ends to tie up in the next couple of days. I used to be very white-knuckled about my "Grand Plan" but I've learned to hold it very loosely. I have to be flexible or I'll go insane.

I'm excited for school to start even though this will be our hardest year yet. I know some people think I'm slightly deranged for homeschooling my kids but it has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. It was very exciting to open a big box and to smell the fragrance of new books. I love new books. And I love my plan even if it is more like guidelines.