Dan O'Keefe's Slide

I've been working really hard on progressing on the violin! It's one of the few things I do for *me*, and I've been surprised at how much I've enjoyed it. 

Unfortunately, my violin teacher will be heading off to college in a few weeks, so my lessons will be coming to an end. I almost cried when she told me. I told her she can't leave me, "but progressing on the violin is from my bucket list!" I told her! Alas, who am I to keep her from college, from her future, lol! I joked with her that she needs to do skype lessons with me! She seems pretty confident that I'll be able to carry on and do well on my own. We will see. I am sooooo slow going when trying to figure out a song by myself. I do much better when I have my teacher play the song first so I can hear how it's suppose to sound. And I know there are just so many things I still need to learn! I'm just not ready for her to go! 

Well, sometimes things just have to come to an end. I will try to continue on my own. I have no intentions of putting the violin down just because my teacher is moving (that's what happened to me as a kid!), but I am truly saddened. I just started! *sigh* Maybe in the future I can find someone else to take lessons from. 

Here's a song called Dan O'Keefe's Slide. It is my current favorite and I'm happy that I can play it so well. This song truly makes me sound like I know what I'm doing, hahaha, but I'm not that great at every song in my repertoire. 

With love,
Mama Hauck

Timothy Lake Camping August 23rd-26th

We took our second camping trip of the summer this past weekend! We thought it would be fun to invite Anthony's friend, Owen, to come camping with us. We also brought Leo on his first camping adventure!

Leopold was a real good boy and big snuggle bug! He was actually better behaved than I thought he would be, lol. I think partly due to the combination of missing Daisy and maybe being confused about not being home? I felt bad because you could tell he was like, "where the heck are we and what are we doing?!" but he eventually lightened up, relaxed, and had a real great time basking in the sun and chewing on whatever pine cones and sticks he could find. It's good for us to take him places and get him well socialized. 

Because we had Leo, we didn't go on any hikes like we typically would have. We spent a lot of time hanging out at camp and down at the water kayaking and swimming. It was only in the 70's, but the water felt great and the sun was out the entire time. While we like setting out on hiking adventures, it was actually a nice change of pace to spend a whole camping trip just relaxing at camp! The kids loved being able to get in so much water time. It truly was an amazing camping trip. 

We have two camping trips in September coming up! One Sam and I hope to do ourselves, and the other with the kiddos. We had wanted to take a solo camping trip last September, but we never did. So hopefully this time we can. The weather will be colder and there wont be any swimming, but there will be lots of hikes and lots of time spent by the fire! 

With love,
Mama Hauck