Nine Hours...

Nine hours....the amount of time Haley had a fiddle in her hand yesterday. Three hours...the amount of time she spent in the car driving from one thing to another. Doesn't leave much time for anything else in a day.

Yesterday was a very music-filled day. Haley woke and practiced her orchestra music and fiddle in the morning (at least 1 hour). We drove to a rehearsal for a couple gigs she and Dylan are doing with some other musicians, this is one...the Celtic Celebration (yeah, I know she was 9 when they hired her for it but has since had a birthday). The rehearsal went fairly quickly (1.5 hours) and they figured out some sets to play together then worked out an outline for the different events.

We then drove home where she logged in another 2.5 hours practicing classical violin. We had a couple hours down time so she and I baked some chocolate chip squares to take with us that evening and killed a few zombies....Dylan wouldn't play with me as he was too busy lying around so I recruited Haley. Ha!

We then got back into the car and drove to a wonderful house party in Philly. The tiny little home in the city was filled almost to overflowing with people playing Irish music together and those listening to it being played. I don't know that I have ever seen so many different instruments in such a small space. Haley's uillean pipe playing friend, Keagan, was there though he was uillean pipe-less as his pipes are trapped in Maine in the snow storm waiting to come home with a new set of drones so he had his tin whistle with him. There was good food, instrumental music, singing, and story telling. I think it is amazing that my child gets to be a part of such a long tradition of music and fun.

We were at the party from 6pm until we dragged Haley out at 11pm though I only counted 4 hours of that in my total above since we ate when we first arrived. Haley didn't want to leave. She kept saying, "One more set!" Yeah, folks, we force her to play her violin all the time! Truth is...she forces us to stay out late to listen to her play her fiddle. ("Haley can we please leave now. Mommy and Daddy are tired." Ha!)

That photo at the beginning of this post was taken at the Dublin Ohio Celtic Festival back in August 2012 by Andi Wolfe (website). She took some great photos of the John Whelan Band while they performed. I needed a publicity photo of Haley for a gig she has with John this coming August and I liked this one a lot.

                         Does anyone know what this is? (Hint...the answer is somewhere in this post.)

Dylan is taking a guitar class in school this semester. They offer Guitar 1 and Guitar 2. Newt had taken Guitar 1 as a freshman. I knew it would be mind-numbingly easy for Dylan so I got special permission from the teacher for him to just skip to Guitar 2. The nice thing is Dylan has been picking up his guitar much more to fool around on it since starting the class this week. He has been so busy first with football then with wrestling that he hasn't had much time to just play unless he has to practice with Haley for a gig. I hope he learns something from the class as well.