Day 351 and the Prize

My last post ended with a cliffhanger.  Will Mom come through with a reward for Huck for practicing every day for 350 days or will he be disappointed?  I couldn't leave you hanging.  I was a little worried myself.  Although we had given the kids trinkets for minor milestones and gifts at 100 days, we had nothing for 350 days.  Should I call Dad at work and ask him to purchase a Lego set on the way home?  I couldn't because we had been invited by some new friends for dinner and he would be late already.  So there wouldn't be a reward.  Huck would just have to be satisfied with his accomplishment.
Or would he?

What is an appropriate reward anyway?  What would be worthy of his effort? 

Reward-less, unless you count the lovely pineapple dessert that the kids had made, we went to have dinner with our new friends, David and Christine.  Their house was full of instruments, recording equipment, and a real record player.  The kids were amazed.  What could be better?  

Well, they found out after dinner.  We got out our instruments and started playing Reuben's Train, Huck's favorite song.  At the first solo break David jumped up and pushed the record button on the big old reel-to-reel recording system that took up an entire wall of the room.  Huck belted out the words into the microphone, thrilled to watch the needle go up and down on the display.  Gus stomped and cranked out solo after solo.  Christine laid down some awesome rhythm on drums and David played guitar and piano simultaneously.  Eric and I kept strumming on the chords.  We sang through the lyrics and played instrumental verse after instrumental verse.  Then we did it all over again.  When we ran out of steam, David rewound the reel-to-reel, adjusted the mix, and played it back for us.  There was a actual recording of Huck singing Huck's favorite song, backed by a real band and his family.  What reward could be better than that?


When Huck went to bed last night he said, "Tomorrow I want to paint my face and play music all day."  What could be better than that?