Julie Month Kickoff

It's May and that means it's Julie Month! We're off to a fun start.

Friday we went on a date to 'the Gig'. The Gig is a musical talent competition promoted and sponsored by our church, The Highway Community, in support of local high school independent music. This year's Gig (the 5th annual) featured 5 high school bands from around the Bay Area competing for the grand prize: a 3 song demo recording at a professional recording studio.

Kids are fun and these kids were no different. There were 5 quite different bands!

Giacomo: this band was a brother/sister combo. The brother played guitar and sang. The sister was sweet and accompanied her brother on the keyboard. They did pretty good... especially under the pressure of having to go first.

New Year, New Love: this band featured one of Highway's own - Kyle S. He's an awesome musician who regularly plays keyboard during our Sunday morning services. New Year, New Love is a three man band featuring Kyle on the drums. They sang three songs and were quite good. I'm partial - but Kyle was the star of this band in my eyes (and ears).

Reptile Explosion: these folks were a heavy metal band from Lynbrook High School (San Jose). Let's see.. just how do I explain Reptile Explosion? Well, first off they were loud. Very loud. Which, actually we liked. It's exciting to see these young kids having a chance to play in front of a relatively big crowd. You can tell they love what they do. So, what do they do? Hmm... the plan seemed to be a) play some really loud music, b) bend your knees and lean over, c) swing your head in circles making the crowd think your head is going to pop off.. and d) have the lead singer bend over and scream un-intelligently into the mike. This went on for 3 songs. The funniest thing would be that these folks would just crank out this mind numbing loud noise... then the song would end and the lead singer would say, in a slightly high voice .. 'thank you'. It was just surreal and a lot of fun.

Alex and Kimiya: so, we've now heard two fairly loud rock bands and up come these two kids. Alex played accoustic guitar and Kimiya just sang. And sang they did. You could understand every word of every song.. and they played some beautiful original music as well as some well done covers. They were by far and away the best vocalists that night. A real pleasure.

Varada Niktu: The final band was a wonderful instrumental band. The lead guitarist did an amazing job - clearly the best musician of the evening. Very different from all the others. That's what made this such a fun evening.

And the winner was .... drum roll..... Alex and Kimiya... followed closely by Reptile Explosion!

We celebrated for Alex and Kimiya by having a Frozos! And we brought one home for our little invalid Hannah.


Saturday we both had to work.. but spent a few hours together in the afternoon taking a nice walk with Tim. We went over to Santa Clara University and walked through Mission Santa Clara. Oh.. and there was a side trip to Frozos thrown in! Saturday evening I got a nice chance to work with Hannah on some of her homework. She was feeling a lot better and it was great to have a chance to hang out with her.


Today: Julie stayed home from church to assist our little invalid in getting back to Berkeley. She's doing a lot better. Steroids really DO work. She was up and had energy and an appetite! She is doing so much better. I hope she hangs in there through finals. Please be in prayer for her. Later this afternoon (after naps).. we took the dogs and Tim out for a nice walk.. and then.. you guessed it.. headed to Frozos. I'm thinking Julie is thinking about going 31 for 31 at Frozos this month!


We hope you all had a great weekend. Enjoy your week!