Merry Christmas!

It's already Christmastime and almost 2011! We've had such a great year. Right now we're getting started on a new CD, which we're recording in our new cabin-studio! We can't wait to get the tracks laid down so we can hear the difference in the sound quality! All but one of the songs on this CD will be Hartley Family originals.

We couldn't take a family picture since Aaron's in Afghanistan, so we made a collage of pictures instead for Christmas. Aaron has been safe so far--for the past couple of months, he's been building schools and doing guard duty instead of fighting. Anna just finished her first semester in college at Henderson State University with a 4.0 GPA. (She's a sophomore because of the CLEP tests she took last year.)

Micah will soon be 8 years old. It's incredible how fast the time has gone. He was 1 year old when we first started performing. When we were in Texas back in the early fall, someone gave him a banjo, and he has been learning how to play it a little bit. (We hear "Cripple Creek" regularly. That's the song we all started out with on our instruments 7-8 years ago!)

Daddy/Tom has been getting excited about the thought of being self-sufficient and just put a fence around our garden so we can eat our produce instead of giving it to the deer. He has watched this video and other like it countless times for inspiration.

These people grow all their food on 1/5 of an acre! If we all did this, there would be no recession.

Christmas is all about Jesus, and while gifts are nice, it's important to remember why we celebrate! Have a very merry Christmas!

Picture of Mom & the boys of the band at Fort Ticonderoga during our tour this summer:

Tupper Lake in NY (we camped near it, on the Bog River, during a break between performances!)