2008 Spring/Summer Tour - Day 4

We left Redding and continued into California, where the weather has thankfully been much sunnier than the previous few days in Oregon. But some kind of allergies started kicking in on me and so Roseann grabbed some Benadryl for me. That knocked me out, though, so I stopped to sleep at a rest area while the girls and Roseann went on a scavenger hunt. They found all sorts of shapes, colors, sticks and even saw some lizards. They didn't keep anything, though... it was more about the "finding".

We drove from there to Santa Clara, where Roseann's brother, Steve, and his family live. We had a great dinner and then went to a monthly recital get-together that they and some friends have, where each of their kids performs some kind of song or poem or something, with the idea that they will gain confidence by doing so. One of the usual families couldn't make it, so it was just us, Steve's family and the Taylors (the host family), who had several kids. It was really fun. Becca and Evee each did an impromptu performance... Evee went first and counted to 20 in the character of two stuffed animal toys who took turns counting numbers. She even did different voices for each. Becca played "This Old Man" on the piano and did very well, with a couple of fixes for some missed notes. All in all not bad considering she was put on the spot... I expected she might have done "Itsy Bitsy Spider" or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", which she knows better, but she had just learned "This Old Man" and wanted to do that, so I was happy that she gave it a shot and did so well. Steve's daughter Amy played a nice song on piano, and all of the other kids were very talented and cute. I was incredibly impressed by the 2 year-old Taylor girl who sang very loudly, and pretty well on pitch, as her older sister played the violin and piano.

I played "The Elephant Song" and later Derek, the host, brought out his saxophone and played a couple of tunes with that. Before he brought it out, he asked Becca, "Have you ever seen a saxophone?" She said, "Yes, on TV." He said, "Okay, but have you ever seen a REAL saxophone?" She said, "Yes." He said, "Where?" She said, "On TV!" That got a big laugh.