Can I Become a Morning Person?

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Amy

I’m trying something new. Waking up early in the morning, before any of my kids get up, to have a little time with my coffee, my computer, a book.

I think I’m a better mom if I don’t start the morning by waking at the same time as my kids to immediate needs of changing diapers, making breakfasts, finding lost toys, etc.

At least, this is my hope.

I am not a morning person.

Never have been. When I was in college and graduate school for example, I regularly stayed up until 3 or 4 AM and then slept until noon whenever possible.

Of course I haven’t had that kind of schedule in a long time, but the point is, morning is not my natural prime time.

Today my goal was just to get out of bed early. Period. I set an alarm and got up at 6.

My plan is that I will begin regularly exercising again during these early mornings. I had a trial run of this a few weeks ago and it was good. One morning I actually got up at 4:20 AM to make it to a 5:00 workout! I won’t make that a regular occurrence, but getting a workout in first thing in the morning is good for me.

I might need to start going to bed earlier, which is very painful for me but probably necessary.

I had to force myself out of bed this morning. But here I am. It’s 6:46 AM, my husband and my kids are still asleep. It’s peaceful at this time of day, and I like getting myself together before beginning my day for real when my family wakes.

I hear a little person stirring upstairs now.

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

More On Yoga Pants. And Kindness. And Being Judgmental.

Posted on September 25, 2013September 25, 2013 by Amy

I have had an interesting response to last week’s “Yoga-Pants-Wearing Mom” post.

The post was featured on BlogHer, and it has received quite a few comments over there and on their Facebook page. Apparently lots of people have opinions about the matter of whether or not moms should wear yoga pants and/or what it says about us if we do.

Most of the comments in response the post weren’t bothersome or even surprising to me. There were people who mentioned their beliefs that people who wear yoga pants: look like “slob[s],” don’t “have respect” for themselves, or disappoint their husbands with their clothing choices.

Meh. I’ve read it all before, which is what prompted me to write the post in the first place.

The one thing that kind of bugged me though, was the comments suggesting that, by wearing yoga pants, I (and other moms who do this) am somehow not setting a good example for my children.

Huh.

I have a hard time understanding that one.

I do lots of things to try to set a good example for my daughters. My choice of pants is not something that I see as a big example-setting opportunity.

So then, just what kind of example do I set when I wear yoga pants?

Hmmm.

Maybe I’m letting my kids know that I’m not overly concerned with what others think of what I wear.

Maybe I’m telling them that I value being able to have fun with them more than I value wearing a certain type of clothing.

Maybe I’m showing them that I am confident in myself regardless of how I look.

Does wearing yoga pants send the message to them that I don’t value myself? That I think it’s okay to not take care of oneself?

Um, no.

My kids might get that message if I frequently criticized myself or made self-deprecating comments, and I happened to be wearing yoga pants while doing so.

It might send that message if I wore dirty yoga pants and also never showered or brushed my teeth or exercised.

But I don’t do those things. Crisis averted.

Perhaps my wearing yoga pants tells my girls that it’s more important to be active and embrace life than to dress up and then worry about getting dirty or rumpled.

Maybe it tells them that it’s okay to wear what makes them feel good instead of what everyone else says is “fashionable.”

Who knows? Honestly, at this point I doubt that my girls are taking any kind of “message” from my choice of pants.

However, I know that they do and will always get the message from me that, except for a few times in life when it is appropriate and prudent to be concerned about how your clothing is perceived by others (i.e. during a job interview), it’s okay to just be yourself. And it’s important to let others do the same.

My kids dress themselves every day. Aside from an occasional veto for seasonal inappropriateness or a stain, I let them choose what they wear, and I don’t interfere. I don’t care if they match. Except when we’re going to church or for certain special occasions, I don’t care if they’re dressed casually. I intentionally only buy them comfortable clothing, because I don’t want them to feel constrained by what they’re wearing either.

I want them to feel free to run and climb and get dirty and play.

But more than that, I don’t ever want them to get the message from me or anyone else that’s it’s cool to judge other people based on how they look or what they wear. I want them to get that it’s more important to be kind than to be wearing the latest fashion fad. That what they do is more important than what they wear, and likewise for those they encounter in life. I hope they will choose their friends and mates based primarily on how those people treat them and not on how popular those people are, what kind of car they drive, or if they wear the “right” clothes.

A random little boy helped Lass on the hay bale fort yesterday. She was so excited to tell me about this and how kind he was to her. She never once mentioned what he was wearing or what he looked like.

I like talking to them about how to be kind and helpful to others. About how good it feels when someone else treats them that way.

I don’t spend time talking to them about what others look like except when they occasionally ask, as of course young kids do.

And when they say, “Mom, why is that man so fat?” or “Why is her skin so brown?” my response is simply, “Because people come in all shapes and sizes, and that’s okay.”

So there you have it. What started out last week as a glib post about wearing yoga pants has morphed into a commentary on kindness and trying not to be so judgmental.

That said, I’ll add that I’m not a Pollyanna, and I know that it is human nature to judge. I’m certainly no saint when it comes to having judgmental thoughts about others. I try not to act on them, and I don’t discuss them with my kids.

They will have plenty of time to learn about the judgments people tend to make about each other. I’ll do my best to help them make good decisions for themselves and to treat others with respect and kindness, regardless of differences.

But for now, we’ll wear comfy clothes and just play.

Farewell to Summer

Posted on September 23, 2013September 22, 2013 by Amy

Ah, fall.

We have beautiful, cool, sunny fall weather here, to go along with the official first day of the season yesterday.

I have mixed feelings about this change of season.

I absolutely love when the weather gets crisp, the air feels fresh, the leaves start to change. Fall. is. my. favorite.

But, I’m sad to see summer go. For one thing, the start of fall means winter is one step nearer and will almost certainly arrive before December 21st when it officially begins (which here means many loooong months of freezing temps, snow, and ice = blah).

But I’m also a bit sad to see summer end because we had an amazing summer.

We did almost everything on our Summer Fun List.

There were only two things we didn’t quite do.

We didn’t get ice cream from an ice cream truck. I didn’t see one all summer. I even tried to find a local ice cream truck company online to see if I could call and get their routes. Not one. So, I improvised and just bought a few different ice-cream-truck-ish ice creams for my girls to eat at home. One was chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream on a stick. The other was a classic orange push-pop. I’m saying “close enough.”

The other thing we didn’t totally mange to complete was to catch fireflies. We tried. Three times. The first time was on the 4th of July. It was too windy. The second time was when our friends came over for a cookout and movie night. It was too cold. The third time was when we were at the Farm in early August. Apparently all the fireflies were dead by then. Who knew they didn’t last all summer? I didn’t. Anyway, we got out there with our nets (the first time). We saw some fireflies (the first time). We just didn’t actually catch any. Next year I’ll know better to make sure we get that one done earlier in the summer.

This past month has been really full of fun end-of-summer activities. I had a lot of stuff to cross off the list by Saturday.

When my parents were here we did a lot. You may remember our camping adventure, which was one thing we checked off.

Since the butterfly garden wasn’t at the Iowa State Fair this year, we took the girls to an amazing children’s garden that has lots of different areas based on picture books.

They even had all the books laminated and available for reading! Heaven.

They hardly had any butterflies in their actual butterfly garden area, but on our way back to the car, we saw this one:

He kindly stayed still long enough for both of the girls to touch him.

We joined forces with Super Friend and her three girls for a trip to a local farm.

The very last thing we completed, just under the wire on Friday morning, was bubble painting.

Naturally, the bubbles were the actual attraction of this activity. But we did make a few “paintings” too.

“Cheese!” I just love how Lass says it.

We are in the progress of developing a “Fall/Winter Fun List.”

After this summer, I am a total believer in having one of these lists with my kids from now on. We did so much stuff this summer that I might not have done without it. The girls really loved checking everything off, and got extra excited about our activities when I told them something was on our list.

I don’t know what it says about me that I need a list to prompt and remind me to do new and exciting stuff with my kids. I guess I don’t really care. The list was awesome.

And now that we’ve done it once, the girls are really into helping me think of fall and winter ideas. I love their fun suggestions.

A sneak preview with some of the things they have come up with so far:

Miss – “Drawing faces on leaves” and “Jumping in a pile of leaves.”

Lass – “Catching snowflakes” and “Making snowballs.”

Stay tuned for the rest of the list soon.

I Am a Yoga-Pants-Wearing-Mom

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Amy

In the past few months, I’ve seen several things online dissing yoga pants. Sometimes indirectly, sometimes not.

I’ve read articles in which moms are chastised for wearing yoga pants to the grocery store or playground. “Yoga pants are for wearing to yoga!,” they say. These tend to be written with a pretty transparent suggestion that the author is trying to “help” the poor, misled mothers who dare to go out of their homes in yoga pants and *gasp!* no makeup. As in, “Moms! Wake up! You are ruining yourself and your children! You would feel so much better if you put on some high heels and mascara! And by the way, you are a sloth! Love, Your online BFF who hates you.”

I’m here to stick up for the yoga pant.

And for the moms who wear them.

Hello. My name is Amy, and I’m Yoga-Pants-Wearing-Mom.

There, I said it. Is that so wrong?

No it’s not. Here’s why:

First of all, yoga pants are comfy! Duh. With three kids under five I spend lots of time squatting, kneeling, bending, sitting on the floor, and otherwise contorting myself to get on my kids’ level. When I am at home, I wear yoga pants 99.9% of the time. Jeans are not my friend.

Lots of people might say, “Sure, you wear yoga pants at home, but there’s no need to wear them out of the house!”

Well. I disagree. When it comes time to go to, say, the grocery store, and I’m corralling three kids to go to the bathroom, get dressed, brush their teeth, do their hair, get their shoes on, and so forth, the last thing I’m thinking of is, “Gosh, I’m wearing yoga pants and about to put on flip flops! That’s not acceptable. I better go change into some jeans and a cute pair of shoes!” Nope. I don’t do that. I usually do manage to brush my teeth, put on deodorant, brush my hair, and put on a little bit of makeup. But beyond that? Forget it. The yoga pants stay on.

Plus, I just can’t justify the extra laundry that would result from my wearing two different outfits every day. I wear clean (okay, mostly clean, sometimes I don’t notice the peanut butter smear/toothpaste drip/other unknown stain until I get home) yoga pants and a tee shirt, and have no interest in changing into a different outfit for an outing, which I would just end up changing back out of upon arriving home again. Double the laundry, and why bother? No need, I say.

Contrary to what some people seem to think, I don’t wear yoga pants because I don’t care about my appearance. I don’t wear them because I’m depressed and can’t manage to dress myself. I don’t feel unattractive because I’m wearing them. It doesn’t make me feel better to get dressed up when I go the the grocery store. It makes me feel uncomfortable. And clumsy.

I wear them because they’re comfy, and I’m lazy about changing into different pants and doing extra laundry. And that’s it.

Yes, of course I do wear jeans or other nicer pants sometimes, but with each child this effort seems to have gotten less frequent.

I wear yoga pants to the grocery store. To the library. To the park. To Target. To play dates.

To be clear, I do have a few rules about my yoga pants.

I don’t wear them if they have stripes down the side. That just seems to scream “I’m exercising!” in my opinion, and I don’t feel the need to make that statement. “I’m comfy” is fine with me.

I don’t wear yoga pants to restaurants. Except occasionally when we take the kids to a super casual place for a family date night and I forget to change before we leave. Okay, I confess, that’s what usually happens for family date night. So, let me rephrase that to say that I don’t wear yoga pants for evenings out with adults. I actually love to get dressed up for date night with my hubby.

I don’t wear them to organized outings. For example, I wear them to the library, but probably not to story time. I wear them to a play date at Super Friend’s house, but not to a play group outing to the nature center. Well, most likely not.

And I don’t wear yoga pants (or jeans) to church.

Aside from those few things, I’m all about my yoga pants.

I’m in a coffee shop typing this and wearing them now. Comfy.

What are you wearing?

First Day of School

Posted on September 16, 2013September 16, 2013 by Amy

I know I’m kind of behind the times and that everyone else has been doing school for at least a couple of weeks already, but I don’t care.

Today was our first day of school.

We’ve actually been doing school to some degree all summer and didn’t wrap up what I had planned to cover until right before Labor Day. So I decided to take the past two weeks off so we could celebrate an actual “back to school” day today.

When I was a kid I always liked the Back to School season. I loved shopping for new school clothes and supplies, getting assigned classes and teachers and lockers, and the actual first day of setting foot back in the building.

(No, that isn’t an error. They both said they wanted to be farmers when they grow up.)

I want my girls to have some of those same experiences even though they are home schooled. So we went “Back-to-school shopping” last week, and today they got to pick from their new “school” clothes what they wanted to wear for their special first day.

What they wore:

Bare feet are a bonus of the home school.

I also got them school ID cards with the name of our school and their names and photos on them. We have absolutely no need for these, but they were free to print and laminate and I thought the girls would get a kick out of them.

They did.

I love going back to school.

The Labor Day Party – Part 3 and Final

Posted on September 13, 2013August 29, 2014 by Amy

It’s Friday! Linking up with Conversion Diary.

Here is Part 3 and Final in my series on the Labor Day Party. Sorry it’s a bit belated, but I got distracted by the girls’ baptisms over the weekend and my parents’ visit this week.

Here are some random observations about the weekend, the Farm, the family, and The Party.

A perfect illustration of The Party in a Walmart shopping cart:

I can’t think of any problem that could come up during the Labor Day Party Weekend that couldn’t be fixed with hand wipes, coffee, toilet paper, and/or a fire extinguisher. Probably should have some beer in there to truly complete the picture, but someone else was in charge of buying that.

Families need to eat together.

My husband’s family is huge. And they love to eat.

My Mother- and Father-in-law are the absolute masters of feeding very large groups of people with maximum efficiency.

There are lots of good ways to do it. Weenie roast and lots of wings/fries are two that are employed every year during The Weekend.

My favorite though, is the shrimp boil.

I don’t know exactly how it works, but it involves boiling lots of corn on the cob, potatoes, hot dogs, sausages, onions, garlic, and shrimp with spice packets in huge pots.

Sometimes it includes lobster. Yum.

The tables get covered with plastic and paper and when the food is done, well, it goes on the table. Literally.

Food. On table.

What could be more fun than grabbing food off the table, eating it with your hands, squirting ketchup and ranch directly onto the paper…? No plates, no utensils, easy clean up. I love it.

Talk about family togetherness.

I love how much stuff there is to do at the Farm. The bigger kids and grown ups do lots of boating, knee-boarding, and playing volleyball. There’s tons of fun for the littles too.

When a family reunion lasts a whole weekend, there has to be plenty to do.

Or not.

Costumes make a party more fun.

The theme of The Party this year was “Jobs.”

After much deliberation, my older girls both decided to be marine biologists. Lass was going to be a zookeeper, but when she saw the wetsuit outfit I was going to order for her sister, she had to have the same one.

A cousin was also a marine biologist.

Baby Sis was a mommy.

The Band (L-R): Fast food worker, rogue accountant, blacksmith, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, trucker, and me, a tattoo artist.

Some of my other favorites:

The clown, complete with balloon animals for the kids

“Mechanic Man”

And, yes, The Lunchlady (complete with the full Chris Farley dance performed during the party)

One of my favorite lines of the night was overheard from my sister-in-law regarding a comment my niece had made about her dad (The Lunchlady), “This is my Daddy’s fake butt that he wears under his dress.” Nice.

Families that rock together, stay together.

Father and son:

Sisters:

Mother and son:

Brothers:

Cousins:

A special tribute sing-a-long for their Grandmother,

Her favorite song, “Lord of the Dance.”

One of my favorite parts of the night was watching my girls have fun on the dance floor.

And the dancing. Oh, the dancing.

Blister in the Sun:

The dance off:

“I ripped my pants!!”

And one of my favorite dance-floor traditions, the “Wipe Out” dance:

An incredible weekend. An incredible party. An incredible family.

So, We Tried a Little Camping Last Night

Posted on September 10, 2013September 10, 2013 by Amy

My hubby and I have been meaning to put up our tent and let the girls “sleep” out in it all summer. It’s one of the few things on our Summer Fun List we still need to do.

We had the tent up and ready when we went to the Farm back in June, but my husband got sick with a bad sinus infection, so we (he) didn’t do it then.

When we went to the Farm in August we forgot the tent. And at other times my Hubby has been working nights or working weekends or we’ve been traveling. We haven’t had many free weekends at home, so the tent has not been up, and we (they) have not “camped.”

This week my Dad happened to bring a very small and I think kind of old Army tent with him. He thought the girls would enjoy playing in it, so he put it up for them yesterday morning. He had no intention of anyone actually sleeping in it. It didn’t even have a floor.

But I saw an opportunity and decided to take it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really plan the whole adventure out very well. I had my first RCIA class last night and didn’t get home until after dark. I did pick up flashlights and cookies on the way home, but that was the extent of my preparation.

Fortunately, my Dad had grabbed a tarp at the hardware store yesterday afternoon, so I threw that down, flung a couple of quilts on top of it, had the girls grab their blankies and pillows and books, and out we went.

They thought it was pretty great.

We had a “Special Secret Camping Cookie Treat.” I called my Mom to ask her to bring out our water bottles (like I said, zero preparation).

We read some stories by flashlight.

We made two trips into the house to go to the bathroom.

The most frequently uttered phrase of the evening was, “No tooting in the tent!!”

Each time we went inside I thought for sure they were going to decide to stay in and go to bed.

See, part of the reason I wasn’t very prepared was that I didn’t really believe they would want to stay out more than about an hour or so. I figured we’d eat our special cookies, read a few books, snuggle and be silly for a bit, and then they’d be ready to go inside and go to sleep in their comfy beds.

Lass actually was ready to come inside after our stories were read, but each time she’d say she wanted to come in Miss would say, “I want to stay out!” and then Lass would say, “Yeah, me too.”

I was getting nervous that we might actually stay out there all night! That ground was hard. And I kept thinking that critters could crawl under the sides or in through the big gap in the front of the tent where I couldn’t get it snapped (yes, snapped, not zipped!!) all the way to the ground. And it was hot and stinky in there (from all the tooting).

Happily, a little after 10:00 Lass said, “I think sleeping inside would be better.” I asked her if she wanted to go in, and she said she did. I quickly and cheerfully said, “Okay! I’ll take you inside.”

To my surprise, Miss said she wanted to go in too. So I scooped them both up and hustled them into their beds before they could change their minds.

I thought I was going to be in for a looong night (though I would have stayed out there!). Instead, we had a lot of fun, rolling around and laughing and pretending. And I still got to sleep in my own bed.

Miss did ask if we could “camp” again tonight though…

Baptisms

Posted on September 9, 2013September 9, 2013 by Amy

Until a few days ago, I had never attended a baptism, Catholic or otherwise.

On Saturday, all three of my sweet girls were baptized.

I was pretty nervous beforehand.

Of course, I knew it wasn’t about me at all, but I still worried I might say or do the wrong thing. I tend to feel nervous when I’m in church that I’m going to do something stupid that completely breaks the rules and has everyone staring at me, slack-jawed with shock at my unintentional inappropriate behavior.

But it was just perfect.

It was beautiful.

When we went to our class about baptism on Thursday night, they told us that toddlers and older children could either stand or sit in the font, or kneel next to it and lean their head over the edge. The deacon said that at Sis’s age we could choose to have her in the font like her sisters or we could try to hold her and do hers like an infant baptism. I was uncertain which way to go.

I was afraid if I tried to let her stand in the font that she would sit down and her diaper would disintegrate and all that weird gel stuff inside a disposable diaper would come out into the Holy Water (this concern was complete with full-colored mental imagery of the above-mentioned open-mouthed horror from the church peeps). Yes, I know I probably would have had time after Mass to change her into a swim diaper, but I was going for simple and not rushed.

So, I planned to hold her and have her baptized like a smaller baby. We even did a practice at home in the sink to see if she would let me hold her that way and have water poured over her head. She didn’t mind it at all at home.

She was a little less enthusiastic about it at the church with the deacon standing over her.

But she did just fine.

I had taken the girls to the church on Friday morning to explain to them what would happen on Saturday. I talked with them about Holy Water and what it is (as best I understand it). I gave them little bottles to fill with Holy Water from the font, which we brought home and decorated afterward (I got the idea here). I let them choose how they wanted to do their baptism. They both got really excited when they heard they could stand in the water and decided they wanted to do it that way.

After that both of the older girls were so excited for their baptisms. My parents came to town Friday night and Miss ran right to her room to show them her little bottle of Holy Water saying, “Look Grandma! You’re going to love this!”

(Yes, that is a toilet-paper-roll Jesus. Gotta love DLTK)

They couldn’t wait to get their chance to stand in the font.

They were precious.

The whole experience with all three of them was just so special.

I think Lass’s favorite was the part with the candle. Since bringing it home, she has repeatedly asked to get hers out of the box and light it, or failing that to just carry it around.

Special Godparents:

I will never forget the looks on the faces of my girls as the water was poured on their heads. Their shy smiles and looks of wonder throughout the ceremony were priceless.

It was an amazing day.

The Freegas Band

Posted on September 4, 2013July 22, 2016 by Amy

For Part 2 of my Live! at Lake Thunderhead 2013 series I’d like to write a little bit about the band.

There is much about the band that shall remain a mystery, as I am not privy to its inner workings. Though I am sort of in the band in that I sing songs with them at the Labor Day Party, I’m not really in the band in that I’m a girl.

See, this band is not a functioning band except for one weekend of the year. They (we) don’t play together except for Labor Day weekend. This year we had two practice sessions (Friday and Saturday), only one of which included all of the band members. The rest of the time they’re just a bunch of brothers, cousins, and friends who like to send each other dirty, crap-talking emails and get together about once a year outside of Labor Day for “band practice.”

Naturally, being a female, I don’t get invited to these “Freegas Weekends,” which once upon a time were supposedly an opportunity during the year for the guys to get together and “practice” but are really just a thinly-veiled cover for a free-for-all guys weekend. They haven’t even bothered to take their musical instruments to these get togethers since 2009.

Please don’t read that to mean I’m bitter about not being invited. It would be weird if I was (invited I mean). I have zero interest in crashing the male bonding time my hubby gets with his best peeps, and I love that they get to do it. I only mention it to illustrate why I’m not really in the-band-that-most-of-the-time-isn’t-actually-a-band but is rather a bunch of middle aged men who like to get together and drink beer and play frisbee golf and um, do other manly stuff.

But I digress. Let me introduce you to the four originals.

The Horse:

My brother-in-law. He obviously plays multiple musical instruments as well as singing. He is a voice of reason among the other guys.

Zebulous Prime:

Bass player, vocalist, and sometimes drummer. Performer extraordinaire. He can harmonize like you wouldn’t believe.

Pestoika:

The mastermind, he comes up with most of the songs the band will sing each year. He plays every instrument the band uses and has showmanship to spare.

Benois (aka my hubby)

He can play the guitar, though he hasn’t done so at The Party in several years. He has a beautiful voice and is just a total rock star. Plus, he’s hot.

The four of these guys parade around the front of the stage, dancing and singing and playing and putting on a show like you’ve never seen before. They are all talented musicians, but more than that they know how to perform.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, there were two additions to the band in 2004.

J Holla

An amazing drummer. He is usually in the back of course, but occasionally graces the front of the stage or even the dance floor.

And last but most certainly not least, The Boy Wonder:

He is by far the youngest of the group and was only about 16 when he started playing at the party. He is a crazy good guitar player. Crazy good.

And then there’s one other honorary “band member.” J-Dub:

He does not participate in the musical performance. To my knowledge he has no musical talent whatsoever. He is more like a band manager/chief dirty joke teller/director of pointless banter. He and his wife also cook the wings on Saturday night. And he gets invited to the Freegas Weekends.

Finally, there’s me.

I’m an occasional add-in vocalist. Some years (like this year) I sing a lot, some years not so much. This year I got to do some really fun songs, including Love Shack, We Got the Beat, and my personal favorite of all time, Poker Face.

And I can’t leave out that for the past two years we’ve had another member, The Prodigy:

He plays violin on two songs and trumpet on one. And he’s only 14.

It’s hard to explain in a few words this unusual group of guys who, mostly, are all related. They are wacky and funny and talented and I wish I could adequately describe what happens when they all get up on stage together to perform.

The music is sometimes awesome, sometimes awful, but it doesn’t really even matter because when the wheels start to come off they just crank up the crazy and it all works out. If the crowd isn’t in a dancing frenzy they’re laughing hysterically, like at this year’s performances of “Business Time” and “Lunch Lady Land.”

Most of the time the crowd is dancing and jumping and clapping and singing along.

The guys take themselves just seriously enough that the music is good, but no so seriously that they don’t enjoy themselves even when it’s not. When one of the band members messes up of forgets the lyrics they just make something up or bust out some wicked dance moves. They welcome family members and friends up to the stage to sing along, whether they know the words (or melody) to the songs or not.

It’s not about putting on a perfect show, it’s about family.

These guys work hard to play music for their people. The band plays one show per year, for the reunion of their kin.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

I am so thankful that I can be a part of this. Part of the party. Part of the band. But most of all, part of this funny, hard-working, sometimes-totally-crazy-but-always-loveable family.

A History of Live! at Lake Thunderhead

Posted on September 3, 2013September 3, 2013 by Amy

I’m trying to figure out where to begin writing about the weekend we just had. If you haven’t read it yet, maybe you could start by checking out last year’s post, titled “How to Have the Best. Party. Ever.”, about the Labor Day Party/family reunion my in-laws do every year.

Last year my husband’s cousin and his wife hosted the party.

This year, it returned to the place of its inception. The Farm.

The weekend was so great. So special. So much. I just can’t write about it all in one post. So, I just decided this will be a little series of posts over the next few days.

Today? The history of Live! at Lake Thunderhead (L@LT) as best I know it.

I think it was 1999 when my husband, his brother, and their two cousins got together and played music for the first Labor Day shindig at the Farm. I hadn’t met my husband yet at that point, so my knowledge of this event comes only through the party lore, passed among family members over the years. As I understand it, the band, “Freegas” as they have come to be called, didn’t have a drum set at the time, or at least didn’t have it at the Farm for their impromptu jam session. They used an overturned 5-gallon bucket and a Tonka truck to bang out some drum sounds while they played music and drank beer. I believe that the name of the party, “Live! at Lake Thunderhead” comes from the intro to a recording that was made that evening of the band’s musical stylings.

I don’t know much about how the party happened the two years after that.

My first time at The Party was in 2002.

The Freegas boys had planned ahead and brought their drum set, some mics, and a crummy sound system. Many more family members had begun to join the festivities. It became a weekend-long party with guests (hubby and I included) camping in a “tent city,” (we were too poor then for RVs).

There was a weenie roast on Friday night, wings and fries and home brew made by close family friends on Saturday night, and The Party on Sunday, preceded by a shrimp boil (the traditions of these evening meals continue to this day).

The party took place on one small end of the dock.

Beginning in 2003 the three boat slips of the dock were filled in so the entire dock could be used for the festivities.

In 2003 and 2004 it poured rain, but the party went on anyway with tarps around the perimeter to keep things (mostly) dry.

2004 was a year of many changes for the party.

In 2004 my brother- and sister-in-law got married before the party, so the whole thing got stepped up a few notches.

There were changes for me that year. Up until that point, I had sung a few songs with the band each year. “Joker” and “Sweet Home Alabama” were my usual contributions. That year I started to become a bit more part of the band, as I sang more songs and even played the bass on a couple. I didn’t play it well, but I did it (yes, I’m wearing a muumuu in the photo below; not a good choice in retrospect, but see commentary below about the theme of the party…).

2004 also saw the addition of two new members to the band, another cousin on guitar and a family friend on drums. And it was the beginning of the themed party. That year the theme was “Hawaiian.”

2004 was the “epic” wedding/party. Most people don’t have a very clear memory of the specifics, but it was an awesome time. I mentioned in my post about last year’s party that it was one of the best parties I had ever been to. The 2004 party might rank #1. It was the year of “Wild Thing.” When the band was flogging and flailing with this song, Holla, the drummer took it over and singlehandedly delivered one of the best party performances ever.

To give you an idea of the momentum of that party, there was a huge thunderstorm with tornado warnings that began to roll in shortly after the party got started.

After the storm started getting really bad, my mother-in-law suggested we move the party up to their Morton building for safety reasons (Hello? We were on a dock. In a thunderstorm. I think she was the only sober person there), but there was just no stopping the freight train that was that party. I recall some yelling by the band and the crowd to the effect of, “Hell no!!” “Keep playing!” “Paaaarty!” And then my father-in-law threw up his hands, laughed, and said something like, “Screw it! We’re staying here!” The party went on.

Epic I tell you.

2005 was themed “Western.”

2006 was “Decades”

We had 80s

60s

50s

70s, 20s (!!), 80s, 60s:

I think that was my favorite theme.

2006 was also the first year the party moved from the dock to the building. This change was made, in spite of lots of kicking and screaming from some folks, for logistical (what a nightmare to fill all three of the boat slips and tarp around the whole dock; plus the dock is really far from the house, making it hard for family members with small children to put kids to bed and continue partying) and safety reasons (kids near water, lots of electrical equipment near water, etc).

2007 was “Hollywood”

2008 was “Bad Bridesmaids”

This theme involved dressing in the worst wedding/bridesmaid attire one could find, in honor of my mother- and father-in-law’s 40th wedding anniversary.

I think 2008 might have also been the year the band acquired decent speakers/sound system.

2009 was “Redneck/Hillbilly”

This was a great year for costumes but a bad year for the band/party. Instead of having it in the building, we had it on the lower deck (see Rule #1 from last year’s post) and it just wasn’t the same.

And Freegas didn’t perform to their abilities. Still fun, but nowhere near up to the standards of years prior. I don’t know exactly why it was a less-than-stellar event in 2009, but it seemed The Party had kind of imploded and needed a little breather.

2010 and 2011 were the Years-of-No-Live-at-Lake-Thunderhead.

Last year The Party returned as an add-on to a family gathering for an auction of my husband’s grandmother’s belongings. It was the first year the party was held someplace other than the Farm. And you know about how that went (or if you don’t, you really should read this, it will prepare you for what’s to come).

Next up will be a little bit about The Freegas Band.

Motherhood and Miscellany

Author: Amy