We LOVE to Sing!

And We Do It All the Time...

Growing up, there was always music in my life. I used to sit and listen to my mom's 45's all the time, and as I got older started recording them on tapes for us to listen to in the car. The radio was nearly always on in the house from my very first memories. When I was a pre-teen and all the way through high school, we ran the local movie theatre, which meant cleaning it during the day and operating it in the evening. While we were cleaning, music was blasting from the sound system. We listened to oldies from my moms era, classic 70's, metal from the 60's, 70's and 80's, all the 80's rock, hair bands, girl vocalists, metal, dead one-hit-wonders from the 50's and 60's, you name it. I loved Supertramp, the Eagles, ABBA, Guns-n-Roses, Meatloaf, Bread, Styx...all of it. At one point, I began to feel I'd filled up so much of my memory with song lyrics there was no room for anything else. I can't remember my daughter's weekly counseling appointment, but turn the radio on to any station and I can sing just about any song that comes on. I love music.

I'm afraid I'm turning every kid who comes into my house into me this way. The radio is always on in our house. My 3 year old knows all the words to all the songs on my moms KLITE station. We drive down the road in our van and the radio is playing "Blinded By the Light", and ALL my kids know ALL the words. Even my almost-2-year-old is starting to get in on the action. And if the radio isn't working (we need a new one, badly!!) everyone is singing their own song. Sometimes we'll all break out in the same tune, but most of the time we're all in our own world singing to our own soundtrack.

It never occurred to me how strange this might seem to others until one day this summer. We'd spent the whole day together as a family, running errands, shopping. We went from store to store, showing off our circus, and minding our own business. (We get a lot of looks because of our number, our age range, and the different races.) Suddenly, we were traipsing along in WalMart, and I came back to reality. I stopped humming the song that'd stuck with me from church the week before, and I looked around. At that moment in time, every member of my family was singing, out loud, a different song. 2-year-old was chanting the "ABC's", 3-year-old was singing "Old McDonald" and each time he needed a new barn animal someone in the family would absent mindedly interrupt their own song to give him one, Annie was singing "Who Let the Dogs Out", 10-year-old was singing a song she'd learned in school the year before, Granny was humming the last song we'd heard on the radio in the van, 17-year-old was singing along with radio WalMart, and I was singing church songs. So, to make us look even more crazy, I burst out laughing, I found it so humorous I couldn't even explain why I was laughing. It was just one of those moments that struck the right cord, and I was almost hysterical.

It's a good thing we've all become so immune to the strange looks we often get, cuz we were getting them times-10 that day. I love my family!!

Tune in again to read tales about the adventures from the Angel Retreat.

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