Favorites Addendum

I knew I'd forget someone.....Samestate.  Another Skull Church offering.  We bought their album and even though we started out really liking them, they have even grown on us more.  They are in the CD tray rotation a lot lately.  I was feeling very un-loyal leaving them out, so now I feel better.  Thank you for listening.

New Favs

The past two years have been very fun musically.  I was involved in the music/talent industry for a number of years, but once kids started arriving and life became sort of blurry around the edges for a few years, my music repertoire was reduced to the likes of Judy Rogers, Silly Songs with Larry, Go Fish, and Classical Kids (all of which we enjoy!).  About two years ago, with the help of one certain teenager who happens to live here and who lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps (actually, he doesn't do much of that!) music I was happily escorted back to that musical thing that I had been missing.  I am so happy to be home.  It has been a wonderful year of discovering some new musical favorites.  It really started last year at the Crown of the Continent Guitar Workhsop here in the Flathead Valley.  Josiah received a scholarship and we were introduced to Joe Bonamassa....oh my.  Gotta love him.  At the workshop, he played his acoustic and quite honestly, we totally prefer that to his electric stuff.  Amazing.  Then, our lives were changed forever on that fateful Skull Church night in March when Eisley was the guest.  Oh, Eisley, Eisley...it's always an Eisley day in my world.  I love all their songs, all their albums, and everything about them....even Sherry's pink hair! Eisley is a 4 sibling + 1 cousin band who is way beyond creative and talented (and they toured with Switchfoot for a time....that's worth about 400,000 bonus points).  At the dentist's office this year, we discovered Dave Barnes and he makes me oh so happy!  The two albums of his that are my favs, "What We Need, What We Get" and "Stories to Tell" contain not even one un-great song.  Love them all.  Some other favorite discoveries this year include - Down Here (awesome lyrically, musically, performacely - I know, not a word - don't care),  Drew Holcombe and the Neighbors (no idea how we found them, but we are glad that we did!), Needtobreathe (gotta love them), and Ben Rector.  And, I know I probably don't need to mention this, but a Favs list wouldn't be complete without Switchfoot.  I know they aren't a new fav, but every time I see or hear them, their favoriteness is renewed.....again.....weekly......daily.....hourly.  We love their music, their lyrics, who these guys are and what they are doing - what's not to love???  So, there you have it.  There are others, but these are our/my current top picks.  I have been spending all of my Swagbucks Amazon gift certificates on music this year....gotta love free music!!

Taking a ride on the Crazy Train

I did something just a little crazy the day before we left San Diego.  Some of you won’t think its crazy at all…it wasn’t a tattoo or those crazy ear hole things. I have one friend who might just have a different hair color every time you see her AND she has tattoos.  If there are any more of you like that out there tuning in, then just go ahead and laugh at me and my idea of crazy.  I'm okay with that.  So the story is that I have started to get some gray around my temples.  My mom grayed the same way – racing stripes, like Flash Gordon, at her temples.  I have talked about dying my hair for a while when the gray gets bad.  It hasn’t gotten bad yet, but one of the J girls is just about finished with cosmetology school, so it was a good excuse to color my hair while we were in CA.  Brad has always said I ought to dye my hair red just for fun.  He saw some gal on Balboa Island who was a bright red/dark pink that he wanted me to try….um, I screamed and ran away.  instead, Jeriel and I picked out a demi-permanent dye (it will fade over 4-6 weeks) that was my own base color with red undertones.   What we actually got in the end was more mahogany/purple – probably because of how dark my natural hair color is.  So, I now have sort of purple-y hair in the sunshine.  And I really like it (Sharon and Carla – no need for the Oops)!!  So, for someone who hasn't dyed her hair since she was young and single and did if for fun, it feels like I am taking a ride on the crazy train.  Maybe I’ll try pink next time!  Just kidding, Mom!  Maybe green would be better.