What Do You Do When You Aren't On Tour?

Sorry this post is a week late but we are on a break from tour.  So it is actually perfect timing to gather photographic evidence and answer the question:  "What do you do when you aren't on tour?"

Every couple months we swing back around to Saint Louis.  It could be for a couple days or a month. Regardless of the length of stay we always unload every single thing from our car.  It NEEDS a cleaning folks.

The kids help with this massive undertaking which is nice.

The second thing we do is go through the giant pile a mail that has accumulated over the past couple months and hope that nothing bad is waiting for us in there.

The third thing on our list is grocery shopping.  My preparedness varies but the basic plan is to buy as many fruits and vegetables as I can, then I cook my little heart out for as long as the break allows!!! 

  My father-in-law graciously lets me overtake his kitchen and cook crazy things, like meals with no meat...but no mushrooms, that is where he draws the line.  

 Lest you think to highly of me, there is always at least one stressful, disaster of a meal and by the end of the break I am ready to go back on tour and not be responsible for every meal for a while.

On this break in particular we had two weeks of beautiful fall to enjoy...

We did a school unit on LEAVES!

We visited the Saint Louis Zoo and met their newest addition Kali the polar bear.

We also attended a house show that Kevin was NOT playing...Maddie pointed out that this is weird and unusual.

I was able to get a bit crafty and  finish the kids' Halloween costumes.  Kevin is a brown bat.

Maddie is Rosalina with her pal Luma (Mario Galaxy characters).  I finished them in time to wear to the Magic House, a really cool children's museum in STL.

We try to make it to church and if we do, we often stop at Imo's Pizza on the way home.  It's a Saint Louis tradition.

The kids really love lounging around at grandpa's wearing their robes and pajamas for as long as possible.

Playing many, many, video games is also high on the To Do List.

This break, and most breaks for the rest of this year Kevin is consulting...so it is not much of a "break" for him, just a different job.  He is also working on some new music with Fallon and playing as many video games as he can.

Don't be fooled, underneath these professional looking clothes are a pair of red swimming trunks and a Families t-shirt.

Breaks from tour are busy, really busy.  We have to fit in a lot of life maintenance; doctor and dentist appointments, bank trips, oil changes, cleaning, work, unpacking, repacking. Despite all the "chores"we really enjoy the change of pace, sleeping in the same place each night, the opportunities for each of us to be creative and also spending time with family. 

Not...technically...a question.

"Touring must be so exciting!"  While not technically a question, it is a statement (dare I say assumption) I hear a lot.  Touring can be very exciting.  

The kids were super excited to see dolphins for the first time in Florida.

We get to see new places and meet new people and hear great music almost every day.  At the end of the day realizing that you made a connection with someone or maybe encouraged or helped someone is also exciting, to me, anyway.

The reality of day to day life on tour, especially when you are not the musician (Kevin plays, sings, and writes the music), booking agent (Kevin books all the shows) or manager (also Kevin) there is a lot of down time.  Most of the time schedules are such that big adventures can't be accomplished in the time before a show or the time before we need to leave for a show.  So we wait...

We wait to leave to get to a show...

Sometimes waiting is great because it gives you down time to spend time with friends.

We wait for venues to open...

 

We wait for shows to start...

Surprise!  Sometimes shows don't start on time.

We wait to go to bed after shows...

 

Well, let's be honest, sometimes we don't wait to sleep...

30 minutes here, 2 hours there; sometimes we make the most of our wait time by exploring what is near, chatting, running in circles, or creating.  

Who would have guessed a community garden with veggie sculptures would be right across the street from the show.?!?!

Who would have guessed the kids would find a super fun box at tiny "park" on same street as the coffee shop Kevin was waiting to play at later that evening.

Sometimes we just wait.

 

 

So, do you homeschool?

Do we home school?  Sure we do, but we like to call it car school.  The state of Missouri requires very little from home schooling families, which is nice because it gives us a lot of flexibility to teach our kids on tour.  

Maddie is in First grade this year and Kevin is in 3rd. 

We don't really take a summer break so that through out the year if we have days that school seems impossible on the road we don't worry about it.

Often school during the summer involves science experiments, art, building projects and more since the kids and I find ourselves at grandpa's house for a couple of weeks.

Making geodes for our Rocks and Minerals Unit

Everyday we work on reading, writing and math. This involves lessons, independent work, discussions, revisions and celebrations when stories, books and units are finished. We add other subjects and topics depending on the kids interests. We try to take advantage of down time no matter where we are to get some school done.  

We have a lot of school time in the car.

We had school at a botanical garden to celebrate the first day of Autumn.

Libraries are the best.  Free, quiet and resources at your fingertips.

We try to take advantage of the traveling nature of our life. We visit lots of parks and gardens.

We also visit lots of National Parks, natural and historical.  The kids have acquired quite a few badges and recited quite a few Jr Ranger pledges.

Most recently we went to the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.

Zoos and aquariums are also on our list of things to do. In May, we went to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, IL. 

Museums are very educational and many of them are free.  This is the first programmable computer in the US, located in Boston, MA.

Art museums are also an occasional field trip.

Sometimes we explore towns like Savannah Georgia, 

or we explore the natural environments we find ourselves in like tide pools on the Oregon coast.

Rest stops can be very educational too.

I bet car schooling looks amazing to you. The truth is teaching our children is hard.  It is hard to be a teacher and a parent at the same time.  It is hard when my kids act like regular kids and aren't focused on their math or rush through their work so they can play or get mad at themselves or mad at me when work becomes difficult.  But, I am thankful that our schooling is a group effort that both Kevin and I are invested in.  I am thankful for second chances to teach and encourage my kids well. Our goals for this time of schooling might be grand and idealistic: a general knowledge of the nature and history of the country, and a love of nature, exploring, and learning. Whether or not this happens, I am thankful for the moments of wonder and discovery I get to experience with Kevin and Maddie.

Maddie discovering that Lake Superior is COLD!

Do the kids like touring?

Ready to go on the first day of our Fall 2015 tour.

I think to most parents we seem CRAZY to take our kids with us all over the country, all the time for the last 4 years.  Maybe that is true but it has worked out okay so far.  Parents we meet might picture their child on the last trip to grandma's house behaving poorly and multiply that times 5 hours a day, 300 days a year.  I think that with a little love and support kids just adapt to the environment they find themselves in.  So to answer the question "Do the kids like touring?", yes they do.  But don't take my word for it...

Where do you play?

Why do I call it tour and not just an extended family vacation?  ONE reason is Kevin books shows and plays music about 5 nights a week.  This is a lot of work(for Kevin).  I will talk about how many shows he plays in a year and where we go, in a later post.  Today's post answers the question, "Where do you play?" in the building sense. Here are a few...

The Well in South Bend, IN

Music venues like Eaden's Ballroom

Coffee shops, like this one in Salt Lake City, UT.

Small businesses like this pizza shop in Mountain Home, ID.

DIY music venue, Seventh Circle in Denver, CO

Kevin has played in restaurants, coffee shops, churches, camps, tents, backyards, bars, homeless outreach sites, music venues, youth centers, festivals, sidewalks...but the place where he plays the most is in people's homes.  A house show is a lovely way to interact with people and share and enjoy music.  This is how it works.  You pick a date for a musician to come to your house.  You invite people to come to your house on said date.  You sit or stand and listen to music with people you know really well or maybe met that night.  Overall, it's pretty great.  You might be thinking to yourself, that sounds fun, I would like to have a house show but my house is too small.  That is NOT the case, I assure you.  I will save you the Dr. Seuss description of what kinds of houses are good for house shows and just say they are ALL good.  Here are some house shows we have done recently.

The Workshop, aka Nancy's apartment.

A house show in Taylor, MI

A house show in Lansing, MI

A house show in Fort Collins, CO

What do you eat?

Once upon a time, before touring I made a meal plan for the week. I shopped once a week, with a list, and served meals at 7:30 am, noon, and 5:30 pm.  Eating out was a rare occasion, and I would say besides our love for pizza, I made fairly health meals.  Even when we are on breaks I fall back into this routine.  I only mention my natural tendencies to contrast what eating while touring is like. 

Preparing lunch is a bit of a balancing act in the car.

So what is it like?  We eat 2 or 3 meals a day. The time and place of these meals are different everyday.  Most of the time I am not making these meals either.  While I don't really like having so little control over providing meals for my family it is a GOOD and constant reminder that God provides each day what we need.

Lots of people we know travel differently, but this is how we eat on the road. We travel with a "food tub" which contains essentials like PB&J, oatmeal, utensils, plates, bowls and snacks. We also have a "cold bag" which allows us to buy things like yogurt or cheese and keep them cool until lunch or dinner.  

When it comes to breakfast, most mornings we eat it. Breakfast is either provided by our hosts or oatmeal from our food tub. Some mornings we wake up too late for breakfast to be important.


 Lunch is the most interesting meal of the day because most of the time we are on the road.  When we first started touring there was a lot of fast food dollar menu consumption.  Now there is quite a bit less, but our go to for the moment is Taco Bell.  We most often buy food for lunch at Aldi in the Midwest and East, and Grocery Outlet in the West.  The barren waste land of Wyoming and Montana where, as far as we know, neither exist, is a sad place for us. The challenge that we face is to buy just enough for one meal but also feel like we have eaten a meal.  Some of these "meals" appear below.

Lunch provided by Aldi

Lunch provided by Grocery Outlet

Lunch provided by my mom. 

Dinner is often provided at shows.  There are many, many people that provide home cooked meals for us. 

 There are many, many people that provide pizza for us (my family's FAVORITE). 

And sometimes we get to taste the local fare, a special treat.

We "shared" an cream cheese brownie, s'more cookie ice cream sandwich in Fort Collins, CO.

Here are a few confessions from eating on the road:

• Sometimes ice cream IS lunch.
• Kevin has used a CD as a knife.
• We don't refrigerate our jam.  It just stays in our food tub and has never gone bad.
• Roadside produce stands (particularly) in the south are our weakness.  We make highly impractical purchases like a whole watermelon and bags full of REALLY ripe peaches.