Catching Up Post #2

So far this month...

 The kids played a two day gig at Cold Spring Village near Cape May. The weather was perfect. The crowd was lively and the music was wonderful! They had their friend Tala singing for them and Francesca dancing with them. They all did a great job! The rest of the festival was fun. We love the different exhibits at the village. On Saturday, I took Haley and Dylan from Cape May to PA so they could play at a recital put on by a dance school. The owner of the school had heard Haley playing at the Shanachie when they were closing and asked the kids to come play sets between dance numbers to give her dancers a break. 

Dylan graduated from 8th grade! What a handsome young man he is!

Haley and I travelled to New York for a fiddle lesson and stayed for the Dunne's Pub session with special guest Joannie Madden. The pub was standing room only for most of the evening.

From New York, we travelled to Connecticut to spend a few days with Haley's friend Sofia and her family. The first night we had a dinner invitation from John Whelan. It happened to be his birthday so the girls helped him celebrate with some tunes.

We attended the homeschooling convention in CT. We had a good time and were able to attend a lecture given by Susan Wise Bauer of Well Trained Mind fame. (It was very good btw...she talked about literature analysis at different ages/stages of development.) The rest of the convention was okay. We picked up lots of literature and a few things in the hall. I think if I were newer to homeschooling the entire convention may have been more relevant for me. Back a few years ago before I found the curriculum I like, it would have been nice to be able to take a look at everything before I purchased it...might have saved some money that way.

We brought Sofia and her mom and sister back home to New Jersey with us so the girls could attend Philadelphia International Strings Camp. They stayed all this past week with us and commuted back and forth to camp. I will post more on strings camp after Haley finishes up there this next week. She's doing two weeks of camp. On Thursday night Haley had a gig with Paraic and the guys (Sean and Dave). It was the hottest day of the summer so far so we began the evening with some ice cream. Haley and the guys busked for a little while then we moved over to the pub for the gig.

Not the clearest picture but I like how much fun they are obviously having fiddlin'

We also attended a couple Philadelphia Orchestra concerts the past two days at the Academy of Music (their original home before the Kimmel Center was built). Both concerts celebrated Stokowski, the conductor of the orchestra in the early 1900's. Today's concert was music from Fantasia and while the orchestra played, they had a huge screen showing parts of the movie. It was a really fun concert! After the concert we met with the concertmaster, David Kim, who invited us backstage to meet the amazing new conductor of the orchestra, Yannick. Haley was so excited to meet him after watching him conduct the past two days.