Four years before my parents 40th anniversary they warned us to start saving. They wanted everyone to go to Maui together. So I setup some of my paycheck to be funneled into a separate savings account. My wife and I had gone a couple of time before but this time we had kids to take with us. So three and a half years go by and we are into planning what we want to do. We were clueless what to do with kids there other than snorkeling and ice cream. So we started searching every tourist website we could find to find stuff for them to do. The common item on all of them was; take an ukulele lesson. That sounded fun, but what if we really liked it? So I started looking locally for ukulele lessons.
In our search we turned up a local ukulele group that met weekly. As a bonus they were starting year 2 of a kids program. Great, so went for a visit. The people were awesome, they had a couple of spare ukulele's to try out, and even better was the pot luck. We had so much fun that night. In talking with everyone our plans for Maui came out, and we were told to visit Mele Ukulele. (We found out later that they weren't serious about that.)
So we get to Maui, and we have grand plans; helicopter ride, snorkeling trips, sail boat trips, etc. (We had been saving for four years, so we could do just about anything we wanted.) So the first day we simply went to the beach and snorkeled. Day two and we ask the kids what do you want to do? Their answer was go back to the beach. So we went to a craft sale (I knew there was homemade jelly there), came back and went to the beach. This continued for the next couple of days; something small in the morning, beach all afternoon, and sometimes dinner out. I have to admit that is a great way to spend a vacation. I had scheduled kite boarding lessons, so I was called in every day to see if the conditions were favorable. Finally I was told to head over. Just before we got to that beach I got the call saying don't bother the winds aren't good. So we decided to find Mele Ukulele.
That is where we met Cheryl and Uncle Peter. Cheryl would pull an ukulele off the wall, explain what made it different and hand it over to us. Uncle Peter was showing us how to hold it, strum, and a couple of chords. When we got to hear what that one sounded like Cheryl would pull down another one, and the process continued. About 4 uke's in we have down a simple chord progression and Uncle Peter starts singing The Beatles. All I could think was this was really cool. This continued for another instrument or two, and when Cheryl tried to hand me the next one, I politely refused and went back to playing. The same thing happened with my wife. At that point Cheryl just stood next the cash register smiling. It was then that we looked at the price tags. It really was a case of our instruments finding us. We had saved for so long, and we weren't going to force the kids away from the beach, so we went for it.
We did join the ukulele group and the kids earned their instruments by practicing for a year, then performing at a Hawaiian festival.
A fun side story to this was our trip home. The Sky Cap at the airport saw the hard cases, and said that without seeing them he knew we bought good instruments. He then told me "don't listen to the teachers/books/websites out there. Instead find a song you already know, and learn the chords for that song." He explained you already know the words and the flow, all you need to learn is where to put our fingers. This was the second week of December, so the first song I learned was "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas."
In our search we turned up a local ukulele group that met weekly. As a bonus they were starting year 2 of a kids program. Great, so went for a visit. The people were awesome, they had a couple of spare ukulele's to try out, and even better was the pot luck. We had so much fun that night. In talking with everyone our plans for Maui came out, and we were told to visit Mele Ukulele. (We found out later that they weren't serious about that.)
So we get to Maui, and we have grand plans; helicopter ride, snorkeling trips, sail boat trips, etc. (We had been saving for four years, so we could do just about anything we wanted.) So the first day we simply went to the beach and snorkeled. Day two and we ask the kids what do you want to do? Their answer was go back to the beach. So we went to a craft sale (I knew there was homemade jelly there), came back and went to the beach. This continued for the next couple of days; something small in the morning, beach all afternoon, and sometimes dinner out. I have to admit that is a great way to spend a vacation. I had scheduled kite boarding lessons, so I was called in every day to see if the conditions were favorable. Finally I was told to head over. Just before we got to that beach I got the call saying don't bother the winds aren't good. So we decided to find Mele Ukulele.
That is where we met Cheryl and Uncle Peter. Cheryl would pull an ukulele off the wall, explain what made it different and hand it over to us. Uncle Peter was showing us how to hold it, strum, and a couple of chords. When we got to hear what that one sounded like Cheryl would pull down another one, and the process continued. About 4 uke's in we have down a simple chord progression and Uncle Peter starts singing The Beatles. All I could think was this was really cool. This continued for another instrument or two, and when Cheryl tried to hand me the next one, I politely refused and went back to playing. The same thing happened with my wife. At that point Cheryl just stood next the cash register smiling. It was then that we looked at the price tags. It really was a case of our instruments finding us. We had saved for so long, and we weren't going to force the kids away from the beach, so we went for it.
We did join the ukulele group and the kids earned their instruments by practicing for a year, then performing at a Hawaiian festival.
A fun side story to this was our trip home. The Sky Cap at the airport saw the hard cases, and said that without seeing them he knew we bought good instruments. He then told me "don't listen to the teachers/books/websites out there. Instead find a song you already know, and learn the chords for that song." He explained you already know the words and the flow, all you need to learn is where to put our fingers. This was the second week of December, so the first song I learned was "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas."
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