Music To Live, and Drive, By

My kids learned to love "my" music in the car. They were a captive audience I guess you could say. It's a more than fair trade for all the Barney and Wiggles songs I've had to sing over the years.

On long summer drives thousands of miles across the country back in the day (before the wondrous invention of the iPod) we played the same CD's over and over again.  Today, my 20 year old will tell you her favorite song is "Desperado" by The Eagles, and my 25 year old is partial to "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel, and Led Zepplin and The Cure.

Back and forth on the daycare commute over her first six years Zoe, the 11 year old, developed an appreciation for everything from Journey to Godsmack from her car seat. Many of her early renditions are captured on our YouTube channel, kindersinger, like this snippet from Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn."

All three of my girls know just about every word to the musicals "Evita" and "Rent." It wouldn't be strange to find us in HEB shopping and singing the different parts. Strange for us, I mean, it might be strange for you. On a recent trip to Florida we karaoke'd "Would You Light My Candle" in a hotel bar for a family reunion. Picture 20 year old Lacey singing the part of Roger, 11 year old Zoe as Mimi (skipping the "bad word") and Ariel and I singing along with both parts from the table, filming. No one else in the bar knew the song.

These days though, its a rare occasion for us to enjoy music together like we used to. We fly on vacation now -each with our separate headphones, and Zoe rides the bus to school. So recently, on a short trip to Austin (to pick up Ariel) Lacey, Zoe and I made a playlist. We named our playlist by each one of us choosing a random word. For inclusion in the playlist, all songs had to be "really liked" by all three of us.

And so was born The "Orange Water Sparkles" Playlist. 16 songs for 43 minutes of listening pleasure. It's our go-to car music these days. Zoe said this past weekend, from the backseat, "I love this playlist because I can sing all the words to almost every song."

Our next playlist is going to consist of each of our Top 5 Fav songs that the others have not yet come to love. I'm looking forward to that one. We don't spend as much time together as we used to, and certainly even less in the car, but it's always nice when music accompanies us. We're naming that play list now...