We are all about adventure in our family.  Why else would anyone take 4 children to a park with 16,000 of their friends, in 85+ degree weather, to sit in the sun for 4 days and listen to loud music?  As our kiddos get older, and especially as the summer winds down to an end, there are less and less opportunities to make memories together, so we definitely take advantage of every chance we get.  So, we took one last summer trip last week to the Unity Music Festival in Muskegon, MI, and had a blast.  I'll just let a few photos from our weekend tell the story!

We're blessed that our kiddos are always up for an adventure, whether it's a road trip up north, a camping trip near the Mackinaw Bridge, or a 4 day outdoor Christian music festival.  The best part is, nothing creates family memories like a little family adventure.  And it's memories that we pray our kiddos will take with them as they grow become young adults in the next few years. 

How about you - what does your family do for adventure?  We'd love to hear about it!

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“A Family is a group of
people bound together by love
and a little bit of adventure”

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I don’t remember when music was first a part of my life.  I know I was pretty young, and I’d play songs by ear on the piano at my grandparent’s house.  Later, that piano ended up at our home as a kid, and I took lessons.  Today that piano is here at our home, and although it doesn’t get used quite as often, music is still a pretty big part of our family.

See, sometime in college, I discovered that guitars are a lot easier to carry around that pianos, or even keyboards, so I bought one and taught myself to play.  Our kids have grown up loving having a dad that plays the guitar. It’s not uncommon around here to have a random jam session with the kids dancing around and dad strumming away on the guitar.

A little while ago, both our girls started learning how to play the Ukulele with GraGra (their name for my mom).  It’s been super fun watching them learn and thrive musically!  And the Uke is a great little travel instrument, which is perfect for kids who love camping as much as ours do!

A few weeks ago, our oldest daughter, Maddie, turned 10.  We had a special music-themed birthday party, and we gave her an acoustic guitar.  Actually, we gave her the opportunity to go with dad to Elderly Instruments to pick out her first guitar.  If you’ve never been to Elderly, it’s legendary. Seriously, it's kind of like Mecca for guitar players - they’re widely considered one of the finest guitar shops in the world.  Not a bad place to pick up your very first guitar.  

There was something beautiful about looking through the different options and picking out the perfect guitar for Maddie.  We settled on a Taylor Mini GS-e Walnut.  It has a smaller (parlor) sized body, which is better for a 10 year old to get her arms around, but it still packs a lot of sound.  It's also a guitar that she'll be able to play for a long, long time - which is the goal!

I'm super thankful for the gift that music has been in my life, and I'm especially thankful for those people who invested in me, from piano teachers, band teachers, choir directors and more.  I'm grateful for the role that it continues to play in the lives of our children, and I can't wait to see how they grow and flourish musically!

  - Jason

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“If I were not a physicist,
I would probably be a musician.”

— Albert Einstein

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