Dreaming Good Things

Ever since watching Jalon play football, Isaaiah has been wanting to play football. I have taught her about the secret power of visualization and she has always been good at making things happen.
She also loves the Voetburg family, making friends with lots of good hearted people and enjoying music. So it wasn't until I was home again in Portland that I realized that Isaaiah and Gabriel created 2 days of magnificent football with the Voetburg family in the beautiful fall weather underneath the magnificent oak trees.

Gabriel seems to be visualizing amazing things as well. His musicality has improved so much over the last year that many people can hardly believe that this is the same kid. Gabriel is putting alot of excellence and heart into his music..and seems to be willing to make it all his own. He has been practicing completely on his own for more than a year now and is really maturing in his discipline and willingness to take responsibility for his music and his studies....and it is showing.
His fiddle scores were so high at this Red Bluff contest that even though he had a 20 point deduction for time...he still won the Jr. Jr. division at this competitive and well attended contest. There were 27 9-12 year olds who were very respectable musicians in this division this year.
I hope that the astounding musicality of the music he and Isaaiah played is apparent in the videos that I will eventually post...

here is a video and photo montage that I made tonight...This includes pictures of friends, Teacher Eileen and Jeff...award pictures...and pictures from stopping to look at Castle Crags and Mount Shasta on the way home...





Here are some videos....my camcorder is getting older and sometimes it doesn't record...it seems that I missed Isaaiah's first round...oops...This is Gabriel's first round...after all of the excitement of the falling microphone etc...the round restarted and this is where that video starts..but you can see Jeff Walters break a string on the guitar on the last tune and back away. Gabriel played solid as a rock...

Here he is playing Shuckin the Bush, Crying Waltz (you really have to commit to those high harmonics..it takes skill to land them sweetly and in tune), Runaway Fiddle



Here is a short compilation of the green room practice just before going on stage...and the slow start by the accompaniests, and the slow attack of the microphone...kind of funny..





Here is a short clip of Isaaiah in the Green room before her Round 2. This is Isaaiah first time in the Jr. Jr. division ages 9-12. She has been 9 for 6 and 7 days.....so she is barely old enough for this division. Pretty cute and she did a great job.






Here is Isaaiah's second round! YEAH Zayah!
Here she is playing Shuckin the Bush, Blue Valley Waltz (boy this is hard waltz people), Runaway Fiddle




Isaaiah's first round was great too...She played Soppin the Gravy, Velvet's Waltz and Crafton's Blues

Here is another Green Room video of Gabriel's second round. The Green room is the bathroom next to the stage (great acoustics)...The second round of the Jr. Jr.s was later in the day Friday...one day after a 9 hour drive...and then the kids were on stage earlier that day in Round 1...they spent most of the day playing football and catching frogs. Then about an hour before round 2 (We were excited that we even made the second round)....Gabriel forgets how to play Fidudulin..

This is where Mommy is the stage and kid manager and realizes that this has nothing to do with music and everything to do with chocolate chip mint ice cream cones and half a cup of chai tea. So we put the violins away and got ice cream QUICK!...a half an hour later....it was time to go on stage..and Gabriel remembered Fiddudulin again...

In the green room Gabriel is assuring himself he remembers this tune and the Guitarists are working out where and when they are going to play and stop...all very last minute..




And here is Round 2 for Gabriel...the magnificent Gabriel Man.



A little later after this round...Eileen (one of the 5 judges) told me that Gabriel played great but that she thought that he went over time....she just heard a snippet of talk. So I decided to tell GAbriel so he would have enough time to digest it before the awards. (Which I thought that I filmed)....arrrg.....He was alright with the news, he knew that he played his best was happy with whatever was going to happen. Isaaiah was very happy with third, and by then Gabriel knew that the time deduction didn't knock him below Isaaiah....He was very straight faced as Eliot got second...and the MC asked him why he didn't have a medal yet,....and he said...."I must have won first." ...and he did win first. I was so happy for him....and so was Isaaiah....Eileen and Jeff were so happy for him too...

The next days was mostly free, just round one Twin in the morning...again we didn't expect to make the second round of twin...so I let them play football and frogs all day. The Voetburg Mom after watching me trying to nap in the grass, invited to take the kids under her care for a few hours while I got to go to the hotel and take a nap...I went back to the hotel and was hard asleep for two hours....it was great. The kids loved pretending that they were part of giant functional family.







Spaghetti Rag and Princess of Wales has been good to the kids...they won Oregon State Twin Fiddle (all ages ) with it, played it on the Weiser Stage, and the tunes were still solid for this contest as well.




So it seems that I also didn't film Isaaiah's Jukebox performance ( more therapy for her when she is older I suppose)....She dressed up as an old time servant girl and sang and played the fiddle breaks to MockingBird...it was cute...You can find a video of Isaaiah and Summer singing this together at the Cider Squeeze on the first Cider Squeeze post.... Isaaiah got a nice second place medal for this trophy and some of the adorable older crowd fell into great consternation and controversy about how she should have had first....Isaaiah didn't care...this way she got a medal of each color.

Hey Waddya know....I found the missing videos.....
Technology is great....mysterious....but wonderful....So my camcorder when I load the pictures onto my computer...will put large chunks of video...more or less in chronologically order...I notice that if I load the videos into my extra sketchy, crash phillic, software that came with the camera...that the software will "find" videos for me...it puts them in actual complete chronological order (then after 3 or 4 seconds...the computer goes black and unresponsive). So this time the computer resurrected itself bravely after this insult and I was able to see the missing videos. ..............I just had to share all that...........thanks for listening.

So here is Isaaiah's first round!



and here she is singing and playing in the Jukebox division:





and here are the Jr. Jr. awards.....I was to excited to hold the camera still and in focus to get a close up of Gabriel's face when he won...but it is still priceless to see him win first place.