Jonesberries

Promised some photos of Rock on Christmas and Alana and here they are. I am blogging from Cafe Chinta in Armaceo de Pera. The nice gentleman who runs this cafe says, “tell all your friends to come to my cafe and get free internet.” Anyways back to the photos.  Our truck became a billboard. We covered it with posters on 3 sides and parked it at the edge of the street in front of the warehouse.

The stage came around on Friday morning.

Next came the generator. Andrew was drooling. Then he realized the generator had an inferior engine to Maggie’s engine. His mind started spinning about Maggie generating enough energy for some future festival in some sort of obscure location around the world.

Now time to bring in some musicians. 8 bands worth. Great people to hang out with.

Hannah “helping out” Rob Cassells with his sound check.

Sam and Donald … uuuuhhhh … working hard on video.

Look who came to see us. Cindy! We love cindy. Me and Andrew met her when she was 14 in Australia. We are so glad she is still in our lives!!!

Rock on Christmas is over and done with. The warehouse is bare and ready to get the partially restored cars back inside. We had a great time! All of us worked so hard. Havent got all the technology and adapters and readers back together to be able to post pictures.

Photos: I will give you some of my favourite in word pictures since I am technologically challenged today. Lizzy and Alana shimmying up the poles of a bilboard to put up some Rock on Christmas posters – and arrows! All the jamming together – playing instruments together and singing as easy and profound as talking together. Sam, Donald and Alana in the “mosh pit”. All my kids but one on stage with the rapper. TJ and Hannah asleep next to the food stalls with heavy metal music blaring. Dang, was it loud. Many of us without voices and exhausted but what a great honour to be part of this festival. What amazing, selfless, crazy people those musicians were. How great to meet them. To see the older “father” musicians encouraging the younger ones and it warms my mother’s heart to see the impact they had on my kids.

Tip: Not exactly a travel tip. If you ever decide to plan and help with a heavy metal festival with your family ensure you have enough good quality earplugs for your family and some friends. It prevents the need to stick rolled up serviettes (napkins) in your ears when you are overcome with the reality and internal monologue of, “Dang, this is loud. I dont remember music being this loud when I was a teenager. Am I really that old?”

Other news, no I am not pregnant!!! Alana will be joining us. Where will she sleep? We have several ideas, not sure what we will go with. We love Alana. We have known her for about 4 years and she seems just crazy enough to travel with us for a while. I was going to find one of our old pictures of her but cant even get my act together enough to that.

We are going to go to a campground now with our extended family as is our family tradition after a festival to rest and regather.