Bethany's claim to fame

Bethany, our eldest child, is once again honing her musical skills. About a month ago, we found Bethany a classical violin teacher.

Bethany started taking fiddle lessons in first grade from our good friend, Tonya Hopkins. Fiddle lessons continued on for about 5 1/2 years. Bethany enjoyed fiddling!!!

Once middle school started, Bethany decided, with the help of her parents of course, that she should pursue her musical talent and join the Riverwood Middle School orchestra. Bethany played with the orchestra for two years and was also in the region orchestra her last year in middle school.

After the big move, Bethany tried out for the Northshore Philharmonia orchestra, one of the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestras. The director gave recommended a lady named Lauren Miller as possible teacher for Bethany.

Well, Bethany is now a student of Lauren Miller! She is a very good teacher!!! After Bethany's first lesson, she recommended that we get Bethany a new violin...better quality=better sound. A few weeks ago, Edd took Bethany to pick out her violin. She also got to pick out a bow, they are all different, you know...we sure didn't, but are learning very quickly!!!

Bethany picked out a very old, but very nice sounding violin! If I can sneak a picture of her with it I'll post it. I'll even try to post a clip of her playing/practicing! :)

Anyway, last week I took Bethany back to the violin shop so she could pick out a few more bows to try out. Her teacher thought she needed to try a few more. While we were at the shop, a lady came in. The owner of the shop, Keith Davis, told Bethany that this lady, Joan Davis, could make her famous! Turns out she is editor for The Daily Star newspaper! She'd come to the shop to write an article about Keith Davis. She took a few shots of Bethany while she was trying out different bows.

This week when I went to pay for the bow that Bethany had picked out, Mr Davis had a surprise for me...he handed me a newspaper and it had Bethany's picture on the front page!!!

I thanked him for the paper! He had saved it for us! What a fun surprise! I put the paper in Bethany's violin case. Later that night, I asked her to make sure I had purchased the right bow. A few minutes later she came back grinning ear to ear holding the paper!!! :)

SIDE NOTE: It's kind of funny....I'd gone into Mr Keith Davis' store a few months ago to get all our violins restrung when Aimee and Mattie started their violin lessons at school. The whole time I was in the shop, I kept thinking to myself how much Keith reminded me of my dad!!!

Well, when Edd and Bethany went to pick out her violin, the came back home and said the same thing! They could be brothers!!!! They look quite a bit alike and have very similar personalities!