Fundraising Video and Thank You CDs!

Arizona Goldens put together a video from the visits we had with dogs at the hotel while we were in Phoenix in December and the home visit when they brought Booth up from Phoenix to visit us in Flagstaff. This was filmed shortly after Christmas.

We were down in Phoenix again this past week and Lu had an amazing time meeting several more dogs, taking walks outside with the dogs and even visiting a very large and busy mall with the dogs! I think that she has gotten really used to the routine now of meeting a dog each night when we stay in the Phoenix hotel. She was much less upset by them coming over each night and it took her much less time to calm down, get interested and start to interact with the dogs. I didn't manage to take a single photo during that time because Myffy was grouchy and ill and had a difficult week in Phoenix so I was mostly managing her during the visits, but I will ask Brain from AZ Goldens to send us some of the photos he took so I can do another post about all of the progress that Lu has already been making with meeting all of these wonderful dogs!

I also wanted to report that Stew's Fundraising Retrospective Cds just arrived last night so we will start sending them out to everyone who has donated $25 or more to Tallulah's fundraising site (www.servicedogfortallulah.info) and for whom we also have an email address and mailing address. If you have already donated, please send us a message to make sure that we have your address! YouCaring.com said that they can release the addresses of people who have donated only at the very end of the fundraiser once all of the funds have been collected, so if we do not hear from you before that time, we will contact you at the very end.

Thank you again to everyone who has donated and who has reposted the link to the fundraising website. As of today we have so far raised $12,632 which is 70.18% of the $18,000 goal from 195 supporters. I have told Stew a few times during this process that it has felt kind of like that part at the end of It's A Wonderful Life when all of George Bailey's friends and family come rushing to his aide unexpectedly. It's been really overwhelming, the outpouring of love and support for Tallulah and our family. I hope that there will come a time when we can repay each and everyone of you in some way and make you all feel as loved and special as your support has made us feel. Thank you all so much.

Getting Tallulah an Autism Service Dog

We are getting Tallulah an Autism Service Dog!!! The down payment has been paid and we have met the dog we hope will be hers. This gorgeous, huge, black German Shepherd is Booth. He is 10 months in these pictures and will weigh about 30 pounds more before he is fully grown. Az Goldens can't guarantee we will get Booth until the placement has been made, it's a matter of when he is ready in his training and when we finish fundraising. He is from a litter of 6, so hopefuly Lu could be matched with a sibling if we can't get Booth. (But I really hope we get him!) It's hard to express the sense of calm reassurance, security and strength that I felt when he was in our home working with Lu. Even Stew was won over in moments and finally admitted that maybe there is a dog who could make enough of a difference in Lu's life to be worth the extraordinary price.

I want to explain a little more of the thinking behind this decision with the dog. I've debated for several days whether or not to open up about this. It is quite personal but I find that since Lu's diagnosis the more I can be open and honest about my fears and feelings, the better we are able to connect with others, get the help for the girls that they need and find the support that has helped get us through this all. So here goes:

A lot of people who know me probably don't know that I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. It's not something I talk about much. It affected me greatly at the time, both the abuse itself and the psychological trauma of going through three years of trail to put my abuser in jail, but at this point it all just seems so far in the past. At least it did until I had children of my own. Two beautiful and extremely vulnerable little girls. As they approach the age when my own abuse began, (Lu turns 5 in May) I can feel the tremblings of an old anxiety stir within me. I was a typically developing child-- not to say I don't have a few autism-ish quirks of my own which Stew happily points out to me from time to time, but fully capable of speech both physically and cognitively. Yet for years I felt powerless to alter the terrible situation I was in. When my few feeble attempts to get help were misunderstood I descended into silence. Lu with her limited communication ability would not have even that smallest of choices- whether or not to attempt to get help if someone hurt her. According to current statistics (http://nctsn.org/nctsn_assets/pdfs/caring/ChildSexualAbuseFactSheet.pdf) sexual abuse now affects 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys. When developmental disabilities and communication delays are thrown into the mix that number doubles. (http://www.atvp.org/Material/Brochures/PDF_Brochures/SA_-_SA_in_the_Disabled_Community.pdf). Particularly for the non-verbal who are physically and cognitively incapable of understanding and explaining what happened and positively identifying their abusers. And even more so for disabled people who require assistance in the bathroom.

The chance of Tallulah being abused at some point in her life is so statistically high that I just can't sit back and do nothing to try to mitigate it. At the moment I do my best to be with her or near her for as close to every minute of the day as I possibly can. We personally select and vet every person who works with her. When she goes to school she is accompanied by a one-on-one aide hand selected by me and trained by our BCBA so that she is always with someone we know and trust. But I know that I cannot always rely on my own physical presence to keep her safe. Most parents think that they are keeping their children safe. I know better than most the ways predators can insert themselves into children's lives so that parents will not suspect. And I'm also terrified of the random stranger who could snatch her one day when she does finally manage to really and truly escape from me or another caregiver even just enough to get out of sight for a moment-- something that would be so horrible and possibly fatal given all of her medical complexities.

This is one of the main reasons I want to buy her a Wonder Dog (here is a great NYTimes article on service dogs titled Wonder Dog: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/magazine/wonder-dog.html?_r=1&hp). I want a dog who's attention is always on her, who can protect her and alert responsible adults whenever she might be in danger. I want a dog who will stick right by her side no matter what happens, through natural disasters or car crash or if something happened to me and I was rendered unconscious or even killed while we were out in public together. I want a dog who can be trained to a 'safe list' of people who are allowed to take Lu's hand and lead her somewhere and who will let no one off of that list take her anywhere. I want this anchor, this measure of security, this creature who's entire world completely revolves around Tallulah, to whom her wellbeing means everything. I want this for her safety and I want this for my sanity. Just the physical presence of this huge, lovely, potentially ferocious dog will tell any evil doers, this child is protected. Don't even think about it.

There are a lot of other benefits that come with the service dog and I want all of those for her as well. But the safety aspect is what sold me.

Several people have questioned the very high cost of buying this dog and couldn't we find one that is less expensive for her. I have looked around, but for this level of training the answer is no. The dogs from Arizona Goldens are all given the same basic training and then get individual specialized training depending on whether they will become seeing eye dogs, wheelchair assistance dogs or autism service dogs. They are all elite. The best of the best. Like the Navy Seals of trained dogs. Which is exactly what I want for Lu. This is why we have committed to spending $15,000 for a dog that will be with her for the next 10-12 years or so, and over $3,000 for the boot camp where they train us and the people who work with her how to become handlers for the dog. However our own personal finances are already so overstretched from 2 years of Autism and EE related medical and therapy costs that we really have no choice but to turn to family, friends and the kindness of strangers to help fundraise for this cause. If you are interested in helping us get an Autism Service Dog for Tallulah, please donate here:

  HERE.

All donations over $25 will receive a thank you gift CD from us which will be ready in March (for the 555 fans among you it has a song from the 30(!) bands Stew has played in during the past 2 decades. A selection of his personal favorites and many unearthed exclusive and never-before-released songs!).
More info and track listing here: http://milkandalcoholrecords.com/stewart-retrospective-cd

All moneys from the sales of our music both physical and digital will also go towards the dog. This includes all 555, Red Square and Milk and Alcohol releases on iTunes and those located on our band camp sites:



http://boyracer.bandcamp.com/
http://555recs.bandcamp.com/
http://milkandalcohol.bandcamp.com/

For physical mailorder: http://indiepages.com/boyracer/mailorder.html

Last but not least, I have just reopened my etsy store at www.babyracer.etsy.com and am attempting to upcycle all of the coolest clothes my kids have grown out of to raise money for the dog as well. I have really missed being crafty during the last couple of years and now I'm getting crafty for a cause. And I'm trying to use up every bit of craft raw material I have in the house so I don't have to buy anything new to make the inventory for the store. All upcycled items have been thoroughly laundered and I am only using the clothes that are still in great shape. Some of their nicer dresses have only been worn once or twice on a special occasion before they grew out of them so a lot are pretty much like new!

Please buy or donate what you can. Every dollar helps and we so appreciate the support.

Relaunch of the Babyracer Etsy Store

Back in 2008 I first started this blog as a craft blog connected with my babyracer etsy store. I was trying to adjust to life staying at home with an infant out on our ranch where I was very isolated. I mean really isolated. And I'd always loved doing crafts, so I started crafting, posting things on etsy, and doing the blog along side. The focus of the blog shifted when Lu was diagnosed and I didn't feel like I could spend time on crafting. But now I've decided to reopen my etsy store to try to help raise money to get Tallulah's Autism Service Dog. 

My kids have a lot of cute clothes and they seem to grow out of them so very quickly. I saved all of Lu's clothes because we knew we wanted at least one more baby, and even though we put aside thoughts of a third child after Lu's diagnosis, I still saved all of Myffy's baby clothes too.

Which is a good thing because I've decided to make my new project upcycling all of the best, cutest and least worn clothes into fun new pieces for other kids to enjoy. I'm trying to do it with only the craft supplies and the clothes that I already have so I won't be putting any money into it that could be going to the dog, and any money we get out of it will go to the dog. And we'll all be saving the planet a tiny bit by reusing clothes that still have a lot of good wear in them.

I wouldn't have imagined that I would be able to find the time to do this project, but the upside of Lu's recent incessant sleeplessness has been that I have had this strange time in the middle of the night during which I can't really do anything that requires real thought (like my taxes say) but I have found a real meditative solace in sitting beside her stitching while she colors and plays in the dead of night. The pictures shown are some of the projects from these nights.

It's kind of a slow process day by day, but I hope you will check out the store and come back again from time to time to see what else I have been able to get in there. I'll try to keep putting more and more items in as I find the time and come up with new little designs. Everything that has been upcycled is in the upcycled section. Thanks for looking and thank you for your support!

www.babyracer.etsy.com

Disneyland and the Dog

Stew finished branding the short-age calves early today and picked Lu up from school. When he got home he called out to me and seemed so sad as I came down the stairs from my office. He told me that he got to the classroom a little early and that the kids were still in circle time. All of the kids except for Lu. (She was at the back of the classroom with her aide.) And they were talking about Disneyland. He teared up a little. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he hadn't realized until today Lu was the only kid in the class who couldn't talk.

I had to stop and think for a minute. I tend to not think of Lu as being completely non-verbal because she has a certain set of words that she can and does say, but the idea of an in-depth conversation about the coolest aspects of Disneyland is definitely way beyond her capabilities. She doesn't even know what Disneyland is. Requesting toys, movies, bath and bed are the basic functional extent of her vocab. But I knew what Stew meant. I've had those moments myself. Lots of them over the past couple of years. Sometimes we both get so caught up in her world, in how hard she works and how much she does and how far she has come that it's a shock to see what just naturally happens with so many other children her age. I didn't want to say there-there and pat him on the shoulder, or remind him of how far she has come or any of the other things that popped into my mind at first. Instead I decided just to talk about Disneyland.

When I was a kid I loved Disneyland. No, wait, I LOVED Disneyland. Especially Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. The first time I went on that I really thought that I was driving the car and crashing into everything. It was definitely a magical place for the 5 year old me. But the idea of taking our kids to Disneyland has been beyond impossible. Until now...

Why you might ask? Because of Booth.

Booth is the fantastic and amazing big black German Shepherd that we met for Lu through Arizona Goldens. Arizona Goldens trains and places service dogs. Seeing-eye dogs, hearing dogs, wheelchair assistance dogs, and (most importantly for us) Autism Service dogs. I fully intend to write a post completely dedicated to him and our fundraising efforts to get him for Lu next, maybe even tomorrow or the next day, with photos and everything, but for now let it suffice to say that the possibility of his presence in Lu's life and all of our lives makes the idea of traveling somewhere actually seem possible again.

Not long ago Lu hid in the house. This is something she does with some regularity. But this time it was different. It was just me home with the girls, Stew had to stay the night out on the ranch. Lu asked for some cookies so we started to bake. She got bored, wandered off, and as I put the cookie tray into the oven I realized it was quiet. FAR TOO QUIET. Myffy was playing nicely with her Toy Story dolls in the livingroom, and I thought that Lu had headed that way, but where was she now? 10 minutes of looking calling, shouting, yelling, screaming, pleading, begging commenced. I couldn't find her. I just couldn't find her. I looked everywhere she normally liked to hide. I checked all of the closets, bathrooms, bedrooms, in cupboards, under sinks, behind toilets, everywhere! I checked and rechecked all of the doors and windows. All locked. She couldn't have gotten out and locked them behind her. She had to still be somewhere in the house. But I was stumped. What if she found a way to get into the heating ducts? Or some crawlspace I didn't know about? We only moved into the house in October. Maybe there was something I didn't know. I started to think about what I would say to the police when I called them and then I heard it, a thump on the bedroom wall. She had to be in the walk-in closet. I'd already looked in there several times, but she was smart and climbed in behind my shoes in the section behind the door swing. The only way I could see her was to close the door and get down onto the floor to look behind the shoes. And there she was, curled up behind my warm wooly slippers.

This happened at home, in a place where she was safe. But what if we had been at Safeway or Target or Disneyland and someone walked between us breaking the grip of our hands? What if she managed to get out of sight for even a second because someone tripped and fell or my attention was momentarily diverted by Myffy falling over or something? What if she hid in a place that was so open and unsafe that I could look for days and never find her? The thought of even trying to navigate an airport with her feeding tube and potty issues (she does great at home, but strange toilets can be scary- I have to always carry her diamond printed princess seat with us for her to ever go in a new toilet) has been beyond us for so long now. But we started talking about it. About bringing the dog. And a respite worker if one of the girls who works with her would want to come. We could stay in the hotel right there at Disneyland so we could leave to go do her feeds and still go back afterwards to see more stuff. And the dog is trained to be tethered to the child. They could be connected  to each other so that she could not get away from him and no one could separate them. If we had the respite worker come too, just to help with hand-offs and potty sits and diaper changes for Myffy and getting meals and everything, we could probably make it work. There was suddenly a very small light at the end of a very long tunnel.

I tried to imagine it from Lu's perspective. About half of her world is tied up in her movies. All of her longest verbal phrases at this point are echolalia from the scripts of her favorite movies. What would it be like for her to meet some of her favorite characters in person? To get to touch them, hug them, hang out with them for awhile? I have heard that Disneyland is great about giving autism passes so that she wouldn't have to wait in line. Not that she would be tall enough for any of the rides. But still, just the place would probably be so amazingly magical to her. And if she tried to jump off of the "It's a Small World" boat because the water looks so inviting, I'm sure that between Booth and us and the respite worker, we could stop that catastrophe from happening. We could keep her in the boat and get to the end of the ride. And if she gets too tired or overwhelmed and needs a break, we could go back to the hotel for awhile. Yeah, I really think we might be able to make this work!

As we went over all of this Stew brought up the fact that Adam Ant is playing in Anaheim, CA on our wedding anniversary, Oct 20, 2012. I'm not sure that we will have raised all of the funds for the new dog by then ($15,000 for the dog and $3,000 for the two weeks of bootcamp to train us and all of the Hab and Respite workers to become handlers for him). Or that we or Lu will all be ready by then. But it gives us something to shoot for. Something to look forward to finally. A fun time for the kids and a bit of fun and crazy for Mom and Dad too if we can swing it. It's worth a try at least.

If you are interested in helping us raise the funds we need to get Booth for Lula, please go to:

http://www.youcaring.com/fundraiser_details?fundraiser_id=428&url=helptallulahgetanautismservicedog

Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Please repost or send to anyone you think might want to help. And stay tuned for more about Booth! I have so much to say about this amazing and wonderful dog!

Thank you!

Credit where credit is due

I wanted to write a quick post to give some credit where credit is due. I realize in the last post about wanting to get Lu an autism dog I may have sounded disappointed about her progress. And while I do wish that we were able to have conversations right now and that I could communicate things to her like the danger of moving cars and deep swimming pools and strangers and all of the things that give me cause to worry about her safety right now, I still have to look back at where we were two years ago and realize just how far she has come.

Two years ago this month was when Stew and I were finally forced to confront the fact that something was going horribly wrong with Tallulah's development and had been for nearly a year. We could no longer tell ourselves that all kids develop differently and that talking late wasn't such a big deal, plenty of people talk late and are ok and that everything would get better when the new baby came. We could no longer let everyone else tell us those things either. We could not delude ourselves anymore. We asked our pediatrician for a referral to the Arizona Early Intervention Program fearing that she may have been going deaf, but with no idea exactly what was going to happen next.

Two years ago Lu made no eye contact, said only 4 or 5 words but only when she felt like it, never upon demand, she did not respond to her own name, she did not seem to hear us when we spoke, she spun, she flapped, she had tantrums daily, sometimes hourly, she actively tried to hurt her sister, sometimes herself, sometimes us, and seemed to be completely out of our reach.

Fast forward to today and I can see a little girl who a generation or two ago probably would have been recommended for institutionalization and probably would have gone through life mute, has now acquired so many of the skills she lost and has gone on to gain so many more. She can now get her most basic needs met through one word requests like potty, hungry, dress, water, horse, car, etc., and can be prompted to put many many words into short sentences now. She repeats relatively long phrases from films and even if she does not yet fully understand what she is saying, I firmly believe that at some point she will. And often she says these movie phrases within a context that kind of makes sense. Like shouting "Ow! Why would you do that?" from How to Train Your Dragon at the top of her lungs when we bring her into the waiting area at the hospital. I can tell you we got plenty of looks for that one. She also plays much more appropriately with her toys now and at times even interacts a little with the other kids at school, and sometimes even with Myffy. She has started to show more interest in other people, including Myffy, Stew and me and a few times has even done things like come up and pat Myffy when she was crying and say "it's ok, it's ok" which is what I often say to her when she is crying while I pat her. The other day Stew pretended to cry when something happened and Lu came right up to him and put her hand on him and said "don't cry" which was pretty amazing. Her tantrums have reduced in number and intensity. Her repetitive behaviors and violence had dramatically decreased. In short she has progressed greatly in every area that has been targeted by her many therapies.

I could go on and on with all of the amazing things that she has learned to do, but it would take a long time and the point of this post is to give some credit to her amazing BCBA, therapists, tutors, Habilitation workers and Respite workers who do so much to help both our girls and us. I won't name them individually because I didn't ask permission to publish all of their names, but they are amazing. Every week day at 7am one of the tutors arrives to do one-on-one ABA therapy with Lu. On weekends they arrive at 8am. Lu does therapy 7 days a week, 5 to 5 and a half hours a day, plus preschool three days a week for 2 and a half hours a day with one of the home program tutors as her one-on-one aide in the classroom, plus speech and OT each one hour a day, one day a week. All of this therapy and school adds up to a total of 46.5 hours of per week for Lu (more than an adult's full time job). And another 15 hours of one-on-one ABA for Myffy plus her hour of speech each week and her 15 hours or preschool each week. Needless to say, a village is helping to raise both of my kids. And without this village who knows where we would be, the kids, our family, us parents, all of our sanity. We owe so much of what we have today to all of these wonderful people who pour in so much time and energy and enthusiasm and love to the work they do with our kids. Thank you all!

It's time for an Autism Service Dog

Lu has been helping us decorate the new house for Christmas, and I finally finished all of the paperwork to apply for Lu to get an autism service dog. It was a lot of paperwork and required a prescription from a doctor as well as a letter of medical necessity, but we did it all and are now waiting to hear back about our application. Based on all of the information that I have gathered I am quite certain that Lu will be approved for the dog so we are starting our fundraising efforts now. I know that this will probably sound insane to most people but the cost of a service dog is between $10,000-$15,000 over the lifetime of the dog depending on the particular needs that the dog is trained to meet. The company that we are working with, Arizona Goldens, told me that no one ever just buys a service dog, everyone fundraises for at least six months towards the purchase of their dog. Our hopes for the ways in which this will improve Tallulah's life are many, but the major point for me is safety- she has no understanding of the dangers posed by moving vehicles, deep water (we have started swimming lessons but she cannot yet support herself in the water which does not stop her from running fearlessly off of the edge of a pool), strangers and putting things into her mouth that she shouldn't, both food items which are forbidden by her restricted EE diet and non-food items which could be dangerous. She is also what is knows as and eloper- one who is wily, escapes and wanders. We are constantly on red alert and put her school aide and therapists and tutors on red alert to beware of her tendency to wander.

We are also hoping that the dog will be able to help her with transitions from one environment to another. Our most speculative hope from reading testimonial accounts, is that the presence of the dog at the foot of her bed might enable her to sleep in her own room and put herself back to sleep when she wakes throughout the night. Right now Tallulah still sleeps in the same room as us, her tiny bed pushed right up against ours so that she has to walk over me to get up in the night so I will wake and be able get her back to bed or follow her. I have had so many people ask me why I don'd just let her go when she gets up at night, but Lu is a danger to herself at the best of times and wandering around alone in the dark is just a recipe for disaster that would most likely lead us all to the ER. I would much rather lose sleep by keeping her safe than lose sleep by taking her to the ER in the dead of night. The idea that the dog could help her with sleep is mainly based on observations of autistic children with night terrors and nightmares. Lu rarely if ever wakes screaming or fearful, so I am not sure that this is the source of her incessant sleeplessness, but the effect of her sleeplessness on the entire family has reached such a critical point now that I would buy the dog just for that purpose alone if someone could assure me that it really would help her sleep. Even just a little. Still, even if that benefit does not materialize all of the other potential benefits of the dog make it something that we are now ready to pursue whole heartedly.

I have to admit here that although Lu is doing awesome in her therapies and is now rocking it at school three days a week, I have slowly come to the realization that all of this incredibly intensive, expensive and beneficial therapy is not likely to result in her being able to reagin skills to the tune of shaking off her autism diagnosis as I have heard of other children doing by the age of 5 or 6 or 7 or 8. It is not many, not the majority, definitely the minority, that are able to regain age appropriate skills to such an extent that their autism is no longer classified as a disability, but of course, like all other parents pouring their hearts and souls and every waking hour and life savings and money from family members and anywhere else they can get it into programs like these, it was our hope that Lu would be one of the lucky few. I don't mean to belittle her accomplishments by any means. She was dealt a terrible hand by genetics and fate and has made Herculean gains through sheer will and force of effort. But still she is autistic. And I have to face the fact that she will be all her life. So we have to make plans for that. We have to plan for the future. For her safety and security and quality of life. What happens to her if something happens to us, her parents, her caregivers and supporters who understand her when others most likely will not? The dog is not a solution to all of this. We have a lot more work to do. But the dog is a start. Hopefully it can be with her for many years to come and will help to make certain parts of her life easier and more comfortable for her. And for Myffy as well, who is also doing awesome in school and in therapy, but who is also showing very real and definite signs of being affected by autism.

So with this in mind we have decided to start our fundraising campaign. From now on all sales of our music in physical or digital form will go towards the purchase of the autism dog. Physical copies of records and cds available directly from us can be found at http://indiepages.com/boyracer/mailorder.html. We have drastically reduced the price of many of these physical copy cds, some as cheap as just a couple of dollars so it's cheap and easy to stuff the stocking of any indie-loving loved one. Digital versions of most of the cds we have made over the years as Boyracer, Jen Turrell, Steward, Mytty Archer, Tricia Yates Fan Club, Possum Moods, Grey Tapes, Fog and Ocean and the rest can be found on iTunes but Stew has also made some great bandcamp sites with rarities to download directly from us at: http://boyracer.bandcamp.com/ If you want to donate to the dog besides getting music, you can do so through the Let Me Hear Your Voice song link on the Boyracer bandcamp site. It has a choose your own price tab. Anything from $1-$10,000 will be gratefully accepted. I'm just kidding about the $10,000. No single person should ever actually contribute that much. Below is a photo of Lu from August of 2008, a few months before she began to regress into autism. Get a load of those great big dreamy eyes.

Stew has also made a Milk and Alcohol bandcamp website for more recent releases at: http://milkandalcohol.bandcamp.com/

And over the course of the next year Stew will be putting up all the out of print 555 singles at http://555recs.bandcamp.com Right now there are only a few up there but if you check back from time to time we will eventually get all 50+ singles up there as he finds all of the master tapes/discs/reels.

Sorry to do so much promoting of our websites and music here, but we have to do all we can to get the dog, so I am also planning to relaunch my www.babyracer.etsy.com store in the new year. I have decided that rather than giving away the kids outgrown clothes (some of which only get worn once or twice before they grow out of them) I'm going to upcycle the best stuff with silk screening, embroidery and applique. I have so missed being crafty and can now get crafty for a cause.

So please, if you have the time, money and inclination, please check out some of these websites to help us get the dog for our girls. Every penny you spend will go to a very good cause. We appreciate every penny and every positive thought.

Thank you,
Jen

Myffy and MSG

Back in October, just after we first moved in to the new house, we had two waves of Australian visitors, the second of which included the Mia Schoen Group (aka MSG). The Mia Schoen Group played with us (one more of Boyracer's many last shows, and a surprise showing of The Young Untold since Ara was in town to play with Boyracer) at Mia's Lounge in Flagstaff. The show was great fun and it was so good to get to spend time with old friends. The kids loved having so many people around and so much happening every day.

The video above is Myffy's audition to join the group as they were setting up to rehearse. What do you think? Should she get in? Or maybe she should form a band of her own! I always thought that Lu would eventually do Tallulah Missoula, like Hanna Montana. Maybe we need a sisters group for the two of them instead!