Silas is a Sprout Champion! As one of the 2014 winners of the Bill Riley talent show, he will be performing on IPTV at 8:00 pm during the Iowa State Fair Talent Championship!
We are so excited for him!
All about SILAS!!!
A wonderful cellist... a great pianist... a super amazing brother.... what more could you ask?
Silas with this school year's piano awards!
Silas during his piano recital...
Silas with his orchestra director, Mr Schilke!
Silas warming up with the Northern Iowa Junior Orchestra after their tour, and before their spring concert in Davis Hall at the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center. He is first chair cellist out of 11 cellos! This year, one of the pieces the orchestra performed was Saint Saens "Carnival of the Animals". So, Silas got to play "The Swan" as a solo during the concert. He did a fantastic job!
South Carolina!!!
After we finished recording at Brookwood Recording Studio in MI, we started driving east. Hour after hour, we drove through the night. In the dark, the hazy blue Appalachian Mountains were still beautiful: the view from the top of the ridges down to the city lights below in the valley was breathtaking.
We kept driving, enjoying (?) the ice-storm damaged scenery once we finally arrived in South Carolina. It was nice to see green grass! Once we reached the coast, the beautiful beach houses on stilts became a common sight.
Click on a photo to view it full screen, then use the arrows on the sides of the page...
Our (new to us) Sprinter is tall enough for all of us to stand up in and will have much more space available to use on long trips!
Notice the short sleeves of one smart guy! It was 82 degrees in North Carolina - a far cry from the sub-zero temperatures we've been experiencing!
While test-driving the Sprinter, we stopped at the beach for an ultra quick 5 minute break before starting on the loooonnngggg drive home. At this beach on Sullivan's island, deadly currents and deep holes make it a requirement to stay out of water! It was posted that if you decide to disobey, you will be given a $1040 fine! We chose to stay out of the water.
On the way back home, we enjoyed seeing the Appalachians again, this time during the day. The rock layers showing evidence of the world wide flood are an amazing sight!
We drove for many more hours, with 4 of us in one vehicle and 4 in the other. This was one time we were thankful to have 5 drivers to share the driving responsibility! After driving for 26 hours straight, we finally stopped after dark at the Cumberland Inn (at Cumberland College) in Kentucky.
As you can see from the pictures, the hotel was gorgeous and we had an absolutely wonderful time! The hotel even had letters from George H. Bush and Jimmy Carter on their walls from the college's 100th anniversary celebration 24 years ago.
Next morning, it was back to driving again, past the black fences and black barns of Kentucky!
After getting many more hours down the road near Indianapolis, Daddy took us to the Boulder Creek Dining Company for a wonderful lunch/supper at 3pm.
Then the weather took a turn for the worse. First came strong, gusting winds around 60 mph, then torrential rain, and later a few ground level pink clouds! As we crossed the states, the rain turned to ice, and then freezing snowy stuff that sent both vans sliding around the road. Not fun. It makes for REALLY slow travel, especially with large vehicles that aren't weighed down. The last 80 miles took about 4 hours.
In the evening, we stopped at the largest truck stop in the world and purchased an ice cream cake which we split up between vans and then devoured.
South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and finally Iowa!
After almost 50 hours of driving time, we slid into our driveway at almost 3 AM Friday morning, very glad to be home. We were gone from Sunday afternoon until 3 AM Friday and that includes 2 days of recording to finish up the CD!
Yikes! Our Internet was down!
I'm sorry you had to wait until THURSDAY for the regular Tuesday post! You see, we have a US Cellular Smart phone set up as our wireless hot spot and it goes with us on our trips. It's super handy to be able to update our website, work on business projects, and get emails sent while on the road.
BUT, ever since Monday, our wireless hot spot smart phone has not worked at all! Hence, no blog post or update. We finally figured out the problem after hours of phone calls. Anyway, we are now back up and running again!
Recording Update: On Monday, we recorded the first half of our new CD! The recording session went extremely well and our engineer at Brookwood Studios was a pleasure to work with. I'll post a full update next Tuesday! Thank you SO much for praying!!! There is still a huge amount of work to do before our next session.
Here are some images from a concert we did at the Waterloo Center for the Arts in Waterloo, Iowa.
Just carrying stuff in before the concert... If you add up all our pack up, unloading, setting up, testing, packing back up, and unloading at home, it would come out to a lot more time than it actually takes to do the concert!
Don't worry! His clothes are still in one piece! (Sometimes we wonder if they will make it...) :)
In spite of the cold, we enjoyed walking around after our concert.
Hope to see you at one (or more!) of our concerts this year!