Zoom Music Lessons & Molly's New Song!

I am feeling so dang thankful. 

Back in February, our beloved music teacher, James, moved for a new job. I was about to cry buckets of tears, but then he told me he was still willing to travel to The Dalles for lessons with the kiddos, hopefully 2 times per month. I thought I'll take it! However we fit into his life is what we will do. We had been doing lessons for just about 3 years, and he has been wonderful with the kids. We didn't want to loose that. We were all set to work with him on his schedule, and then Covid happened. We were busy homeschooling, and James was likewise busy being a teacher at his school over zoom. Life was chaotic and we decided to postpone any form of lessons. 

So the kiddos had gone since the beginning of March without music lessons. Sure, they would take their instruments out every now and again to play, but it's not like when they are actually in lessons and practice every day. I really missed the music. And honestly, I refuse to let the kids just drop their instruments. I know they would regret it later in life. And they are just sooooo good for their age!! 

About a month ago, we were lucky enough to catch a gig James was doing at a saloon in The Dalles. Afterwards, we invited him over for a drink and chit-chat. By the end of the evening, we agreed that Zoom music lessons would be a good fit for all of us right now. He wouldn't have to drive in, we wouldn't have to drive in, we could each do it in the comforts of our own home, we would be saving money, and he would get all the money instead of paying a share of it to the place we were doing lessons out of.  It was a win-win for everyone. 

A few weeks ago the kiddos had their first Zoom lessons! It was so much fun!! Doing lessons this way is really going to be wonderful. 

The kids have now had a couple of lessons under their belts. Anthony is working on major and minor scales and applying them to jam to music on his own, and Molly has been working on a Christmas song and had the additional homework of writing her own song! 

Her latest song will crack you up. It is a good one! I thought it fitting that she should write a blues song....a Covid-19 blues song, lol. She loved the idea. 

I helped with the lyrics (I am totally great at writing kiddo songs by the way, haha!!), but Molly Lynn figured out what chords she wanted for the song all by herself. She got out her chords sheet, hopped on YouTube to find ukulele blues chords, and figured out what chords sounded the best for her song. Together we got her song 2/3rds of the way done before her next lesson.

After presenting her song thus far to James during her lesson, her homework was to record it. So here is that recording. 

Next, her homework was to finish the song, which she has done! Here is her recording of her entire song! ENJOY!! 

I am so thrilled that the kids can continue their music lessons. There was definitely a void in our lives without them! 

With love,                                                                                                        Mama Hauck

Horse Riding Lessons

Lucky little Molly gets to take horse riding lessons! I was talking with my neighbor Amanda about wanting to get Molly into lessons sometime, and she mentioned how she wanted her daughter Montana to do the same. Amanda ran into Tracy King, who works at the vet clinic, who just happens to also run a horse stable and offer lessons. Boom! We had things rolling! 

Amanda has horses, so Montana naturally has some horse riding experience. Molly, not so much. The last time she was on a horse was about 4 years ago when we still had Nik. But Nik was big and spastic and I didn't trust him very much, so the kids' horse riding experience was just walking around the corral on a lead line. 

Needless to say, when Molly found out she was going to get horse riding lessons, she was ecstatic! It's going to be fun watching her start from the basics and progress! Her first lesson was this past Monday. 

The lesson was amazing. She did so well! She really had her listening ears on and did a great job listening. Tracy King is a great instructor, and the horse, Bo, was pretty chill. I loved watching her. We'll be doing lessons every Monday afternoon. 

Exciting! 

Now we just need to buy her her own helmet (we borrowed one) and new boots (ones in picture are too small!) and she'll be good to go! 

With love,                                                                                                                Mama Hauck

Timothy Lake Camping, August 7th - 9th

We took another camping trip to Timothy Lake recently! We stayed in spot #14, a single spot, so we weren't able to invite our friends to camp with us this go-around. However, since the single spots can hold 6 people, Molly was able to invite her friend Montana to join us. 

The weather was pretty darn nice, sunny and about 75* the whole time. The kiddos had a really great time, as always, swimming and kayaking. We spent most of our time hanging out at the water playing. There was a fire ban during our camping trip, but luckily we always bring our propane fire pit to use (along with having a real fire when there isn't a fire ban). So we were the only ones that got to enjoy a fire at the whole camp ground! haha People were totally envious.  

We really enjoyed our weekend away, but it was freaking busy there!!! Everybody and their brother wants to be camping and using day use right now. I guess because of Covid and pretty much everything being cancelled, there's nothing else to do? Day use was packed every day by 8am! It was insane. I'll admit, I got pretty pissy pants when day users kept encroaching on our spot. I don't mean to be *that* person.....but come on, it is SO HARD to book camping now a days, and I spend the time and money to book and pay for a spot. Nothing makes my blood boil more than when people show up to use the day use area, but decide they don't want to stay in the day use area (because it's busy and full!) so they MOVE into YOUR area and shove YOUR stuff to the side so they can fish and swim at YOUR SPOT that YOU PAYED FOR. And then get annoyed at YOU because your kids are having fun and scaring all the fish away. OMG.  I almost split some freaken skulls. Talk about disrespect. On top of that, day users just trash the place and leave their crap garbage behind because they don't care. 

So yeah. That happened and I'm totally bitter about it. Each day we were shoved over by people to this little spot and were forced to deal with it and not get in the way of all the fishing lines and such. Annoying. 

Don't they know Timothy Lake is MY happy place? And they should't be assholes and trash the campground? UGH

Anyway....we had fun. Despite my blood boiling. Haha

One more camping trip coming up in September, and that will conclude our camping season for the year! Hopefully it'll be far less crowded, and our friends get to come with us again because we have our favorite spot, spot #25, yay! 

With love,

Mama Hauck