Behind the Scenes Christmas Prep

A lot is happening around here as we get ready for the Christmas season. Practices are vamped up – beside the usual group practice almost every evening. We also have group practices on Monday and Friday on the songs just the 6 of us younger ones play. For each of those practices, goals have been set, metronome markings have been picked for the next practice, and we spend time working individually beforehand. (Check out our Christmas concert schedule starting December 1st at http://johnsonstrings.net/ under the "Schedule" tab!)

To get into the spirit of Christmas, we are already enjoying batches of English Toffee and Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls – a couple of the 8 or so recipes we make every Christmas season.

You can hear Christmas CD's playing at different times throughout the house. (Karen and Abigail have been working on finding and arranging our new Christmas music since July/August, so for them, the Christmas music is nothing new. They do try to be nice and save the majority of the audible Christmas CD playing {a.k.a. without headphones} until at least October. J ) By the way, our house is never silent unless we are gone – so much happens all the time. Then again, I don’t really know if the house is silent when we’re gone.

Karen is making supper right now and it smells absolutely wonderful! I’m getting hungry just sitting here and waiting, writing this for publishing tomorrow morning.

Here are some pictures from a concert we did earlier this year…



Lots of the old churches we get to play in have neat architecture. 



The “perfect” angel? ... complete with a halo

Oh, it’s supper time!
See ya later!

“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” – Matthew 1:21


“He shall be great, and shall be called the son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” – Luke 1: 32-33

Minnesonta

We are all worn out from our weekend travels, but our concert in Hinkley, MN went extremely well! Praise the LORD! People traveled to the concert from up to 4 1/2 hours away, coming from Michigan, Wisconsin, and up by the Canadian border! The church was packed with a responsive crowd and we sold a ton of CDs - we SOLD OUT on 2 of our CDs and were only left with a handful of the other two!!! It was fun.
The couple we stayed overnight with was so sweet. 
They had been dairy farmers. Here's a bit of humor from their house to brighten your day :)

 We stopped at the Mall of America for a few hours on our way home. 
The first neat store we spotted was a hat shop.
Oooo the fun of playing around! All sorts of choices!
Top hats, anyone?


Weird Bluegrass in South Dakota

On the way to our first concert, we stopped at one of our favorite restaurants - 
a French American fusion named Cafe Brule. 

 See our drinks? We had a blast choosing the flavor combinations for our cream sodas. The list of choices was quite long...I went with Kiwi Dark Chocolate, Karen chose Peach Toasted Marshmallow, Seth thought Blueberry Butterscotch sounded good, and Daddy liked Macadamia Nut,  while Mommy definitely liked the Raspberry White Chocolate better.

We unloaded, set up, and played an evening concert, loaded back up...

and then unloaded and set up the next morning for a church concert...





and loaded back up.... then we unloaded and set up for an evening concert...
and of course loaded up again once it was done. Some people ask us how we get our exercise...
I wonder sometimes.

 weird Bluegrass - nowhere near Kentucky. For us Iowans, it looks sorta fake.
But, maybe that's how it's done in Kentucky.
Anyway, we were playing bluegrass on the bluegrass - not something you do every day!
Seth and Karen are warming up before the concert on their duet, Limerock.



We had a great time and were glad to see old friends and meet new ones.

It turns out that not only does this guy have a cool, one-of-a-kind John Deere tractor car, but he also had a brother who wrote some of the gear software that Daddy uses at John Deere! It's a small world.



With such a unique subject, I had to have some fun with the photos!


On the way home the following morning, 
we stopped once again at Cafe Brule for the dessert we had skipped a couple days ago!


New Promotional Video!


Watch! Listen! Be entertained!

Click here to watch the video, The Johnson Strings in Concert - A Family Making Music!, on YouTube.

Click here to listen to a preview of our second CD, Heal the Land.

Click here to hear a bit of our first CD, Vision.

"Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD."
Psalm 150:6