Nov. 3rd 2007 “Checkin’ in!

Hey there! Just checkin’ in! I know it’s been a little while since our last post. Just lots happening and we’ve been gearing up for a busy CMA week. It’s wild how when we get off the road, that everyone tends to just kind of scatter! We all get home and spend the next week or so catching up on home life, getting things done etc. Some of us gig in the meantime between our shows and some write and record. And then we all just tend to take in some rest and recoup time! Our last major run for the season was our gig out in “Osceola, IA. At “Terribles’ Casino.”
All travels there and back went well, except we came really close to losing Debbie at the Chicago O’ Hare airport. This particular flight had one stop at this airport. Our first plane (Nash. To Chicago) had been held up from landing for 20 minutes due to weather. When we did finally land, we were in an immediate scramble to catch the next flight to Des Moines. And this is when Debbie showed her sprinting capabilities. We stopped long enough to see Debbie go into the restroom. We wait for her, and wait and wait. NO DEBBIE! Trenna goes in to fetch her so we could all run to our next flight, and she comes out empty handed. Where’d she go?! We all had to jump a shuttle to get from one side of the airport to the other. There just seemed to be no other way. O’ Hare is so huge, to try to run it at this point, we would definitely miss our flight. All we could do is move on and hope that our disappearing bassist would fall into place. Eric called her on her cell phone as we were getting on the shuttle and apparently she’d thought we’d already left her and she was running through the different connecting gates, “the long, hard way.”
We’re on the shuttle, getting ready to take “the quick and easy way,” and he’s urging her to turn around and come back, but she was already way too far into her sprint to turn back now. We seriously didn’t think that she’d make it, but we got off the shuttle and behold there she is! She was all out of breath from running what we found out later was roughly a mile from our initial gate to the next one we had to be at. She beat us there! Way to go girl!
So all three days at Terrible’s Casino went well. Our friend and horse lover Michelle came to our shows and during our downtime, showed us how to rope. She also brought some of her family and we got to embarrass her brother on stage. Poor Kimmy lost her cell phone on her flight in from Memphis, but later scored a new one free! The weather was pretty poor for a few days, a lot of wind, and rain however when Saturday rolled around I had a casino version of “cabin fever,” and I was compelled to literally take a run into town. I believe that it was roughly 2 miles into town, I wasn’t totally sure, but when you tend to get stir crazy like I do sometimes, your mind, body and the craving for exploration have no limits! So with my I-pod, warm jogging pants, sweater, trusty running shoes, baseball cap and 5 dollars, I ran! It was a crisp, fall day in Osceola and the sun was shining. I felt like a butterfly coming out of her cocoon! I made it into town, and came across a nice little coffee shop that had just opened for it’s daily business. I went in, sat down, had a nice cup of swiss chocolate mocha coffee and chatted with two ladies for about an hour or so. Ha ha, they probably thought that I was crazy, running all the way into town from the casino just to have a cup of coffee, but hey, stir craziness will do that to you! I did end up buying a half pound of that nice coffee, and on my way back out of town, I picked up a nice sweat shirt of their local area high school team! I just thought it was so cool. The town is so precious and everyone was so sweet.
Thank you Osceola and Terrible’s Casino for having us. We felt warm and welcome there! And I’ll never forget my trek into town for a cup of fine coffee and having such sweet people to sit and chat with.

We’ll be writing to you all again soon. Things kind of go into hibernation in the fall through the winter, but we’ll be keeping you up to date on the goin’ on’s! Congrats to Becky! She’ll be giving Pam Tillis a hand with her Christmas show coming up here in Nashville (mid November- Dec.). So, if you’re in Nashville, go check it out!