More Winfield!!!!

Every year since the beginning of time, my family has gone to Winfield, KS the third weekend of September for the Walnut Valley Festival. We always look forward to it! In my 28 years, I think I've only missed 4 or 5 total. It's a blast.

This year, Josh and I went up on Wednesday night and stayed through Sunday, which is definitely the way to go! We had a good crowd this year too. The two of us, my parents, Carrie, my cousin Dinah and her husband and kids, and then the Jackson clan was right there with us too. They brought the entire family (all 6 kids) this year which was fun!

Anyway, I have over 640 pictures from those 4 days, so that is my excuse for it taking a while to get anything up!

This is on Thursday. My dad playing tricks on 5 of the Jackson kids. First he lines them all up on one knee....




Then pushes 'em over :)




Scott and his oldest daughter, Sarah, as we were all walking to the train trestle to throw rocks off.




On the trestle




Two of the boys, Daniel and Grant, throwing rocks into the river below




Josh stood between the two tracks.. it was a lot further down than it looks in this picture. Yikes




Gay.




Speaking of gay, this is a lady from the band that played before the Wiyos on Thursday night. Who the crap plays one of those things still?! What is this, 1986? She was totally into it too. Now, I'm not typically one to knock any instrument, but c'mon... It was funny too because she kept wiggling her fingers on the keys as if it would give her some vibrato sound. Yeah, no. It doesn't do that, woman. One of the other guys in the band called her out on it on stage later which I found really funny. Anyway, this band, Mountain Smoke, were awful. I mean, I guess they were ok by bluegrass standards, but really, they were awful. In fact, I kinda took to calling them Mountain Suck. Alas, we had to sit through Mountain Suck (several times) so we could have good seats for the Wiyos.




And now... THE WIYOS!!! Best band there all weekend. We didn't miss a single set!




Doesn't this dude kinda look like Jason Mraz? He sounded a lot like him too in my opinion. He played the steel guitar




This guys voice was awesome. He has amazing stage presence too! He had this character he played during all the sets. He never smiled and never spoke. He'd just tip his hat.




This guy played guitar, ukulele, and banjo. He also sang several songs and also has a great voice!

This guy cracked us up. His expressions were hilarious! He interacted with the main vocalist a lot. Way awesome.

Washboard! Dude rocked it

Our tents were set up across the path from the horse barns and apparently, they have barn cats. We saw 3, but this little one decided to make our campsite his home while we were there. It was over all the time! Sweetest thing

Cousins! Dinah, me and Carrie. We were headed over towards *dun dun dun* the Pecan Grove!

The Pecan Grove is an interesting place. Some people camp there and never even set foot in the festival grounds. It's one of those things that is hard to explain. You just have to see it. It is the most crowded camping scene I've ever seen, but also the most incredible. Quite a few of the folks camping there are crazy wild hippies. Many of the buses, vans, campers, etc are straight out of the 60s and 70s. There are old green army parachutes hung from trees, music coming from every corner, smoke EVERYWHERE, and of course, drunk people. It really is an experience.

They have a competition every year for the best campsite and people go all out. I mean ALL out. I've seen some pretty wild stuff over there. It's a great place to take your kids if you want to show them how stupid getting trashed on alcohol and drugs is. Seriously. And the best part is, it's totally safe. I've never once heard of anything bad happening over there. I've been going over there by myself since I was probably 10 years old. Winfield is just awesome.

Since Dinah and Jeremy were Winfield Virgins, meaning they'd never been before, we took them over one night with the kids to just show them around. We found this one campsite that had a huge camping chair set up by the road. Isabelle just loved it!! If you click to enlarge this photo, you can see her face. It's priceless!

Yeah, this speaks for itself. Like I said, you'll see anything over there. They actually had a very realistic looking pair of *ahem*, you know, that you could stick in there. Jeremy decided to try it out in all his glory though.

We saw Jupiter! If you look closely, you can see the moons next to it. It was way awesome, but very hard to photograph. I probably looked really stupid holding my camera lens up to the binoculars to take this picture... Hey, it worked though!

This is Bill Wedekind. Amazing amazing story. He lost his hands and his sight in Vietnam. Shortly after it happened, a family member suggested he take up pottery. With no hands. He had a doctor fashion two nubs on each arm using the bones. It took him a while to learn to use the muscles correctly, but now, look at him! He's a great testament to never letting anything stop you. He and his wife have a booth every year in the craft barns. I always like going by. And his pottery is so cool.

This was pretty typical. The Jackson boys wrasslin' Josh. I think they all had a great time. They're really great kids. Some of the most well behaved I've EVER seen. It's unreal. They're also good about stopping when Josh would say "That's enough".

And, when Josh had had enough, they went after each other :) I just love Daniel's face here. At one point, I really thought he was going to pass out, though! Grant had him in a tight headlock. Boys will be boys!

This is their beautiful sister, Sarah. She's such a doll!

And here is the baby of the family, Rachel. She's also way too cute

Isabelle was not happy for some reason and Jeremy (her daddy) and I were teasing her about her big lower lip.

At stage 3, Autumn had had enough! She was so sweet

Indiana was FILTHY. And incidentally, so was Dinah since she was sitting next to her son!

Here's a little story that played out at Stage 2 one afternoon while we were keeping an eye on the Jackson 6 so their parents could sneak away for a little bit.

Meet Billy Cole. He is the youngest of the 4 boys and a ladies man for sure! He made friends with this pretty little girl.

They sat on the hill and got to know each other. Cole read all her stats on her little "If I get lost" card. It was true love.

Then, Cole's brother Levi came around. The little girl was overcome with this older man and started hugging on him before Cole even knew what was happening.

Levi tried to explain to Cole that it was all her doing and that he hadn't tried to steal her away!

Levi then went to Josh to get some advice (at least for the purpose of the story, that's what he's doing here!) to which Josh said "Pshhhh.. Women!" and then told him that Cole would get over it. With 4 good looking boys in their family, they might as well get used to fighting over women because, let's face it, in their small town, the pickings will probably be slim and run-ins with each other are bound to happen.

Cole decided to have a Come to Jesus meeting with the little girl about the events that had just transpired.

Her excuses were pretty lame so he decided she wasn't worth it. There are plenty of other fish in the sea! The End.

Later in the evening, we went and saw the Greencards perform. They are super. They're actually from Australia and England but met in Nashville.

Then we watched the David Munnelly Band. They're an Irish group that is phenomenal. They had a dancer come out for some of their tunes

This is Shauna Mullin. She sang with the David Munnelly Band on several songs. She has a great voice, but she sang the same 4 or 5 songs EVERY SINGLE SET. That got old.

Isabelle had fun dancing to the music.

Indy climbed to the top of a pole!

He also managed to push Izzy down and skin her knee. Here she is sitting in Autumn's stroller, protecting her battle wound.

This time, there were about 8 kids attacking Josh. I think all 6 of the Jackson's are in there somewhere along with Indiana and Isabelle. Autumn is just watching from the comfort of her stroller

We went to see the Wiyo's last set on Stage 3, Saturday night. We got their super early just so we could be front row. Yes, we had to sit through Mountain Suck again. But it was worth it! Before they started playing, during the sound check, the lead singer was goofing off (without saying a word, of course). He hopped off the stage and went and sat in my mom's lap! He took a sip of my sister's hot chocolate as well. She turned bright red. It was great.

He went to get back up on stage and motioned to Josh to come give him a boost. I wish I had video of this.... He basically played it up really big and ended up hanging onto Josh. It was great!

Their sound checks are just as entertaining as their sets! Anyway, they finally got to playing and it was fabulous.

When the Wiyo's set wrapped up around 12:30 AM, we went back to camp to grab our instruments and head to the Pecan Grove. You see, the Pecan Grove is well known for their jams. There is a dirt road through the middle and people set up all along the way and just play. People come and go with their instruments and it goes on pretty much all night and day. This night, Dad, Scott, me and Carrie set up under one of the lights. It was a lot of fun and there were some WILD people out there.

We left there around 2:00 AM and went over to Carp Camp, which is in another section of the camp grounds. It's were the more conservative hippies camp! They're like the orchestra of jam sessions. They're amazing. While at Carp Camp, everyone but Dad, Mom and I went back to go to bed. Around 3:45 AM, Dad and I went over to the Pecan Grove again to just wander and see what was going on. Right before we went in though, we heard this HUGE loud bang and saw this bright flash of light all the way across the grove. It was really weird. So, being the smarty pants that we are, we went in anyway :) We think someone was playing with black powder and lit it up. Luckily, we didn't hear of anyone getting hurt, which is really amazing considering how big it was!

Right after it happened, Josh sent me a text message asking me what the heck it was. He didn't believe me when I told them that someone shot a banjo player. So I fessed up and told him I had no idea. He said he felt it was over at our campsite, which is a ways away! Thankfully, Dad and I didn't see or hear anymore bangs while we were in the grove. At 4:00 AM though, the place was still hopping! They have several unofficial stages over there and one of the ones we went by was still going strong. So fun! We finally left and went back to go to bed.

The next morning, Sunday, Carrie found this guy IN her tent. Carrie HATES spiders, so I'm actually still impressed that she managed to get it in the box. He was gigantic.

So that is Winfield condensed into as small a post as I could make it. It's a great time for people of all ages! This was one of the best ones in the last several years too. I can't wait to go back next year!!