Hey Everyone! It’s currently Friday morning… somewhere near 2:00am. I just finished uploading the videos from days 2 and 3 to YouTube so here they are! I’ve written down notes of what happened on Thursday (Day 4) but I don’t have time to write out an entire blog post about it right now… I need to get a few hours of sleep before we wake up and do it all over again! We’re going to the Atlantic Ocean beach on Friday! I’m hoping to be able to lie in the sun and get some more sleep… I’ll have Thursday’s summary posted hopefully by Saturday morning for you.

Thanks for your patience…

These first two videos were recorded in the bus as we were on our way to our white water rafting adventure.

Hi Parents – Part 1

Hi Parents – Part 2

The following video was taken on Wednesday as we sang our first concert… this video accompanies this blog post.

Behind The Scenes – Day 3

Today went by really fast! Or so it seemed… We woke up and found the coolest playground outside Emmanuel Lutheran Church! It was one of those old wooden ones… you know, the kind that can still give you splinters. Not the new plastic stuff with the rubber “sand”. We’re talkin’ good old fashioned splinter wood with metal poles that you can bang your head into if you’re not careful! It was AWESOME!!!

Hearts In Puppetry gave a quick show to the kids in the preschool at Emmanuel before we left in the morning and it was a huge hit with the little ones! They loved the puppets and wanted more! Good times!

We sang at Deerfield retirement community this morning for a group of elderly residents who really loved our show. There were tears in some of their eyes as Eagle’s Wings sang and they all got quite a kick out of the puppet’s performance. It was our first (almost complete) “show on the road” and it was really cool for our kids to have that experience at Deerfield. When the puppets brought their “stage” in the choir stepped back and sat down behind them. A bunch of the choir kids commented that it was really cool for them to get to see the organized chaos that is the back stage of the puppet show! The way the puppeteers work together at such a high rate of speed is quite a sight!

I was hoping to have a video from today posted with this post but it didn’t upload last night. I’ll try again tonight.

After we had everything packed up we stopped for lunch and a few brave souls joined me at Bojangle’s for some chicken, biscuits and some sweet tea! Then we headed for Raleigh… a 4.something hour drive later we arrived at St. Philip Lutheran Church in Raleigh, NC. We went through and practiced our concert. Then they served us a wonderful dinner of spaghetti and sweets which Garrett Panno’s grandmother apparently baked!

Our first full length concert was awesome! Both the choir and the puppets really did an amazing job and everyone had a great time! After the concert we were whisked away to our host homes for the evening. I’m currently sitting on a sleep number bed at the pastor’s house! My lucky roommates for the night are Michael Miller and Matt Christman.

Here’s some pictures from the day!

[Image by: OSLCmedia]

This first one is of Alex just talking about the things he sees… he’s made this a little tradition of his… pretty entertaining if you ask me.

This is me explaining what we were doing before we went rafting.

I have a couple more videos that I was hoping would upload as I slept last night… they did not. I will try and get them loaded for you tonight. I’m at the mercy of whatever type of internet connection I can find.