Best October Ever!

I'm just taking a minute to enjoy the events of the last month.


It started out great. A crashed laptop gave me an excuse to travel to Blacksburg to visit Jim at Tech, buy a cool new desktop system, and go to Outback for slabs of delicious beef. Beef cattle: delicious and slow. Mmmm. Here's a picture of Jim and me after we fired up and loaded up the system.


On 10/5, I got to lead worship at Emmaus. I had the awesome team of Erin on Bass, Ethan on drums, Seth on Electric, and Diane running sound. Caleb was out of town and I had the freedom to make my own mistakes and bad choices. Like forgetting to change the key to one of the songs so that it was so high, I had to scream it. But we had a winner with "Victory Chant" with hand motions. We had fun, God showed up. What could be better?

Then lickety split after church, I got to teach Caleb's guitar class how to do bar chords. We had fun and then our hands got sore, so we took pictures.



The next weekend, we picked and sang with the Turner Clan at their annual Octoberfest. Most appreciative crowd ever. They dance and sing and hoot and holler like we're Lynyrd Skynyrd or something. Once again, the weather was awesome and so was the company. Keith played a set with Flint Hollow Bluegrass after dinner, then played some folkie rock until the wee hours.


Next weekend, I was thrilled to be invited up to Highland County for back-to-back fun. I attempted to entertain the attendees at the fundraising Spaghetti Dinner for the Highland Logos group. Chris and Heather Scott are the best hosts ever. New Directions sang some wonderful worship songs and then I got up to do some more music. Since my entire front row was preschoolers, we did all the hits: B-I-N-G-O, Eensy Weensy Spider, E-I-E-I-O up to 5 animals, Chicken Dance, If You're Happy and You Know It, all the hits. Then we ate their awesome Spaghetti and cleaned up. Then it was off to the Laurel Point Bed and Breakfast, up to watch the sunrise over the breathtaking mountains, and on to McDowell United Methodist Church. Such a pleasure to lead worship with such a worshipping crew in that beautiful location. We had fun, God showed up. What could be better?

Delaware only has one Fiddle Championship and we try to go there every year. Another great trip for the Dill Pickers on 10/25. Did I mention that we're in Rehoboth Beach? We got there a day early and caught some of that great ocean air.

At the contest, Keith took 2nd in Fiddle and 3rd in Banjo and our band, featuring Ray Hesson on Banjo, took 2nd. Check out the video of his fiddle tune below. Our buddy, Frank Nanna MCs the event. He's not just great on the Banjo, he's great with a crowd.

After the contest, we had a fun evening jamming with the Prairie Dog Band and Route 40 at a local venue.





Ending out the month of October with a strangely good Hallowe'en, I took my guitar to work and played a little bit at our break. My coworkers are perhaps the most supportive ever, yelling out requests for songs from our CD and even letting me do 2 encores. Go Freight Team. Carry my LOVE, boys.



On Saturday 11/1, we played at our church's Square Dance. Now before you go judging our Square Dance, I have to say that it was the best church event ever. We ate. We sang. We Square Danced. We Line Danced. We did the Hokie Pokie. The weather was PERFECT, high 60's and no wind. Wonderful.

The month of fun closed out fantastically with Bluegrass Worship at Round Hill United Methodist just West of Winchester. We sang "I Saw the Light" and "In the Garden." Keith played the Fiddle so sweetly and so fiercely. It was great. Then, for All Saints Day, we closed out the service with "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and "I'll Fly Away." We had fun, God showed up. What could be better?


How great is my life??? So great!!!