Friday night before the Apple Festival, I organized a concert that I was super excited about. Mark Abernathy has a band that I love and I have his CD and listen to it all the time, so I told Chris I thought it would be super cool and amazing if Mark could come play at the Apple Festival. I started to type Mark an email, but discarded it because I figured it was silly since he lives in New York. Chris emailed him later, and to my surprise he replied and… long story short, he came to the valley to do a concert!
Robert Lacey was tuning my piano around the time I was planning this and said his band would love to open for the concert. Here is a pic of his band the Disorderlies – Robert and his wife Emily and Ann and Marty Hepworth. They were so fun to listen to, I didn’t know they had a band before and I loved hearing them play.
James loved hearing Mark play! It was fun to have a concert where the kids could come and play while we listened to great music.
Oliver thought James was being funny, so he decided to be a goober too.
Me and my friends Kristy and Jarad and Bruce set up this stage and my friends Jamie and Kendalee helped me decorate it. I love the part of community events where we all get together and try to set things up and make it all work (it is also frustrating before it all works, but I LOVE all the people I got to work with this year on the festival. We had some interesting planning moments, but everything came together really well). Mark was awesome, fun to watch, had great songs, some I had not heard before. It was a really cool evening – especially because we don’t get a lot of concerts out here in the sticks!
Yes, Elora is wearing her dinosaur festival mask. And Chris had fun dancing with all the kids – and one extra. Mark’s little girl loved our kids and they all had a great time playing together.
And they all fell down! It was really fun watching the kids play with their new friend.
Yay! I am so excited that I got to meet Mark and hear him play!
I had forgotten to arrange for anyone to help clean up after the concert, so I was a little worried about that until the concert ended and EVERYONE who was there got up and started putting away chairs, sweeping, helping with the stage. I love this valley. The people are so helpful and it was again, awesome to work together with everyone. James helped clean up too.
We realized that Mark and his family probably hadn’t had any real food for awhile since they came all the way from St. George, so we invited them over for a late dinner. Mark played the piano while he and his wife Monica sang. So awesome to hear! Our piano sounds really good when someone plays it who knows what they are doing! I wish I had more pics of our kids playing together, they all had such a great time and it was really fun to hang out with Mark and his great family. Fun to make new friends.
Chris and I wrote an article to promote the concert for the local paper, so we gave Mark a copy. Yay for being published in the local paper! I wrote my fair share of articles this year for the festival. I need to find someone with more writing talent to help me with that next year! I can’t say enough what an AWESOME night this was, we had such a great time and stayed up way too late considering the Apple Festival was the next day, but it was great. Thanks Mark for coming and thanks for bringing your family so we could meet them all! We loved it!
