Sam playing ukulele with Eddie Kamae!

Sam brought his ukulele to Honey’s last night and brought down the house when invited up to play with the band. What an incredible experience for Sam, and mommy! “I want Eddie Kamae!” He is our hero – the man we listen to on brief errands, on long road trips (300 miles of Eddie Kamae kept the boys smiling all the way to NJ from VA!), and at home. The guys pictured above are so welcoming and encouraging to young kids, and Sam dove right into playing with them as if he’d done it before. People were diving into purses for anything that would grab a picture! He had a fantastic time, unbelievable, really. I had tears in my eyes watching him get to live a dream he has daily – he puts on concerts at home, using the coffee table as a stage. We have concerts every day…and here he is getting to play with a real band and his hero, Eddie. We got a lead to a ukulele teacher in Kaneohe whose heart is in teaching very young children, so we’ll check that out. People were saying “he’s brilliant!”, “I can’t believe he’s 4?!!!”, “he’s so natural up there, a born entertainer!” Truthfully, I think Sam is very comfortable with his ukulele in hand – he was just doing what he does at home all the time. What a blast. (click on photo above for video, or here: Video: 2009-may-sam-plays-with-eddie-kamae)

Sam biking around the fish ponds while I run with Ben.

We went on a run yesterday on base after church – Sam got to do some mountain biking on trails around the fish ponds. He even handled some fairly good hills, and a gully 🙂 He was nervous at times when the speed picked up on the downhill, but put his feet out and kept his cool! We had two wipeouts, and after he recovered he informed me that wipeouts are really just “times when you drink water or itch your nose.” The route was about 4 miles – amazing he had energy to put on a concert with Eddie that night! He was a tired, but very happy buddy.