Music. I love music. I have not been given one iota of musical talent but I still love listening to music and enjoying the talents of others.
In spite of my own weakness in this area, my husband is gifted. He has a beautiful voice and he plays the guitar, so our house was not totally devoid of the joy of making music. In fact, we have great memories of group sings when we lived in Greenwich, NJ and several of our friends could sing and play guitar. Lots of hippie Christian singing. "I was driving in the front seat...." (Love Song)

My very first curriculum fair purchase was a basket of those kindergarten instruments. I spent $100.00 on this noise-making ensemble and we learned to hide the basket when we had company. What was I thinking?
For years I tried to turn us into some sort of singing family minus me. We had these
Homestyle Harmony tapes. Sometimes Tim would sing publicly with the boys and a couple of times this turned out to be beautiful but it all ended one year when we tried singing a
Whiter Than Snow/White Christmas rendition at a Christmas concert. We were so bad none of the kids would ever try a group sing again and that was the end of matching shirts too. My mom did try sending matching yellow shirts that Easter but my kids almost never forgave when a lady in the row behind us squealed, "Oh, look at all the yellow duckies."
Over the years the boys played harmonicas and recorders and finally piano and guitar.
Timothy inherited my grandmother's ability to sit down at the piano and play any tune he had heard once. He also took lessons from a very strict teacher. He needed that to balance out his gifted ear. While other people often were amazed when he could sit down and play amazing renditions of songs, I was amazed when he could read difficult music. For years we fell asleep listening to him play the piano in the hall. I miss those days.
Nicholas, Benjamin, Nathaniel and Andrew have all taken up the guitar but Andrew has carried that to new levels using Jam Play and You Tube. Our neighbor is a gifted guitarist so he helps Andrew too.
And then there is that time of day when we get out our family hymn notebooks, close the windows, and sing hymns during MT. When we finish going through the hymnbook this last time, those days will be over but we will still sing together as a family during get-togethers (the
Gloria Patria), Reformation Day (
A Mighty Fortress), Christmas car trips (
Silver Bells), Christmas Eve (
Silent Night), radio sing-alongs and living room dance parties.
I tried to introduce the children to classical music and at first it seemed like maybe it hadn't 'taken' since they all liked a weird array of musical styles including, at times such awful music as Barry Manilow and Kenny Rogers, but all of the children have grown up to continue to listen to classical music and for that I am thankful. You can enjoy Lynyrd Skynyrd and Handel!