Iowa City and live show with drums!

On Thursday evening we went for a hike, before dinner. It was gorgeous! Hills, streams and green paths. Such a nice change from flat Florida. I love being out in nature.

Yesterday Liz and I snuck out and played 9 holes of golf! FUN! The course was peaceful, green and even had lots of water. Which made it interesting. ;). Neel watched the kids. :).

Later, we all went to downtown Iowa City. We drove through the beautiful University campus and ate dinner at a very progreesive-all organic restaurant that served an excellent variety of food. We had hummus, steak, calamari and fresh mixed greens. Mmmm
Meanwhile, the kids played on the playground directly across from our outdoors table. There was even a live jazz concert outside. tons of people filled this hot spot supporting the musicians. That's always nice to see. The kids even dance a song or two.

I woke up this morning and heard from our friends that we missed another real loud tornado last night. Ugh! I told them to wake me next time. LOL. I guess that's normal here.

Any way, we all got ready, packed up the van and headed for the Iowa Children's Museum for our gig. We got there around 11am. Early! This gig was different because Neel was playing with me. Yay! So happy to have some interaction on stage from another adult. LOL The auditorium was awesome! About 100 racked seats and room on the floor for another 50+ kid. There was a beautiful scenic backdrop too, very colorful and looked like a jungle.

We set up, plugged everything in and rehearsed a little. The cool part was doing almost all the songs live and adding new songs that no one's heard before, that aren't on the first CD. Great to test out newer songs and see the reponse from the audience. :)

Just before the show Neel and I waited behind stage. That was fun too, to have someone with me waiting in anticipation. We both made our entrance to a full auditorium and... really from there on, we were on automatic pilot. The kids ranged from all ages and participated a lot! I made a horrible mistake of asking one of the older kids to be my helper on stage. Well, because the stage was so low to the ground, all and I mean all of the kids thought that they were supposed to come on stage. So, I had to quickly change gears and go into the audience, to get them off the stage. Heeheehee. Yikes! Lesson learned. They got the hint and stayed off the stage the rest of the show. Too funny!

We sold CDs and got great feedback!

Needless to say, It was hard to leave our Iowa friends and their family. I really wish we all lived closer.

Driving to Kansas City now. Next kids show is tomorrow at a country club. We will be staying with Neel's cousin til Tuesday. This sure is one way to visit family and friends! ;)