the funniest time ever....

well well today Beka came up to me and said, "hey nate can you come with me over the road to the paddock, tie me up, put tape over my mouth and take pictures of me? so I'm like "Okayyyy whatever!" So we got some props and went across the road and into the paddock.
so then Beka sat on the chair and I whirled the rope around her till she was all tied up.
across the road was a man in a car who seemed to be giving us strange looks. we decided to ignore him.
so then a man and women in the house beside the paddock came out with cups of tea and whatnot, and just stood there, watching us. they kept saying stuff like, "tie it tighter! Tighter!" and "if you're still there by dinnertime we'll give you a feed!" So me and Beka just tried not to laugh as I tied her up. then I sealed her mouth with masking tape and then took some pictures. the stupid thing was the camera was on ten-second mode, so every time i clicked the button it took ten minutes to take the actual picture. so I'm like, "how do you get it off this ten-second- mode?... and Beka's like, "Mmmppphhh," we almost lost it there, but the masking tape still held. then I untied Beka and pulled the masking tape off. Painful. She had a look at the pictures, then we did it all over again. luckily she got the camera mode back to normal. one of Dad's patients looked worrried and asked us why we were doing it. so we just smiled and said, "Its all in the face of art."
...by now we had got the giggles and the neighbours had rode their motorbike in the house then gone off somewhere which was quite funny. we couldn't stop laughing.
so I took about thirty photo's. I just had to click a button. Beka was going to use her camera remote, but then we realized she couldn't cause her hands were tied up. oh man, it was the funniest time ever. then we walked back over the road and made pancakes for lunch which was quite nice.
So this was the best photo out of the lot:

pretty awesome aye

nate

Good stuff

We're watching ourselves play on tape!
Man it's crack-up. Actually to be honest I think it's kinda hard to know how good or bad you are until you watch/hear yourself.
Jordan

our first concert!!!!!!!!

Wahooo our concert was mean! It began at half one. We went on first, and played three songs, Turn On the the Lights, Fight for Something that's Worth everything, and I Wish You Were Here. We performed them real well, and were onstage for about 15 minutes.
The best thing is that Jason recorded the whole thing so we'll probably get a disk of our songs sometime soon.
So yeah it was a mean concert. We got back home after the end of the whole concert (which was a bit over three hours!!!) and watched the recording Mum recorded of us. It was actually really good!
Yeah, so it was awesome as being onstage playing for people who were cheering you on. It felt so awesome. Thanks so much everyone for coming. It was an awesome afternoon.
nate

This is your final warning!

Be their or be square!
Man we've been raving on about this for weeks-hopefully it's as good as we hope it will be.
Jordan
P.s For all those unlucky people who won't be able to make it-never fear! Hopefully we'll be recording some of it to post up here 4 u.

1 day....

Wow tomorrow's our first real concert! That's the only thing we've been going on about lately, but I'm sooooo excited about it. We decided, that as some of the performers are doing two shows, that we should be able to do three songs. We practiced today, and were going to again but Jord had to go when we got back from shopping at 5. Might be able to fit a practice in tomorrow before church tho.
So all good,
nate

second practice.....

Today was pretty awesome. After drum and guitar lessons, we went down to the church to have another practice. Daryl had left all his cymbals there from last night, so he said I could use them. 8-) This was them, or one side of them:There was like ten cymbals altogether. Man it was awesome.

We got our songs sorted. Jason came in and helped with the sound. We did some extra songs, as well. The Variety concert programme was there. It starts at 1:30pm. We're officially first!!!!! We're going to kick it all off with hopefully three songs. And the programme put us as: "Mayday band." We're actually Mayday. Lol we're like the only band there. Everyone else is basically just singing or dancing!

So, three days left.....

nate

I'm way to busy sometimes.

Hey everybody.
Today's been pretty sweet. We did a mean band practice, and now I'm blogging on someone elses computer. It's a pretty flash laptop to.
And their baby I was babysitting has finally gone to sleep to.
So it's all going great at the moment.
Even if I'm a little tired.
Jordan
p.s I finished my schoolwork at 6.30 today! Man I'm busy

Ready to rock

Well today was pretty sweet-did some band practice. I still can't believe there is only 5 days to go............ I am soooooo excited! Even if we only get to do two songs, that's still about ten minutes onstage and it'll be awesome playing in front of a crowd.
At the moment I'm trying to think of as many places we can play as possible.
We're pretty much set to play now. We have ten well-polished songs (plus a few more on the way!), got all the main formations of a rock band, and we practice about 5 days a week most of the time.
We're ready to rock and ready to roll.
I'm thinking Fuse might be a good idea. I'm not sure if Dan is eligible to enter though, considering he's got two more years before he hits the teenage years.
Sometimes I don't think I can wait that long.
Anyway, another reason I have to be excited is that Jason said he'd record our songs for us!!!!
YES! Go Jason. I'm seriously bouncing off the walls at the moment.
I just hope we don't stuff up

Jordan

Marble Cake

hello this is Daniel speaking... today i made a marble cake but I didn't make it right so it is a non-marbleised marble cake,

This is your life

This is your life, are you who you want to be?

This is your life, are you who you want to be?

This is your life, is it everything that you dreamed

That it would be, when the world was younger,

And you had everything to lose

You had everything to lose

-Switchfoot

This song is soooo cool. I heard it the other day somewhere, and then it only struck me what the verse meant. There's two different ways to listen to a song.

a). just listen to the music and the words, without really taking any notice

b). actually listen to the lyrics and figure out what the whole point of the song is.

I just realized what the point of this song is. You've got a life, why not be what and who you want to be? Follow your dreams, no matter how small the path is.

That's basically it,

nate

first practice...

After church today we went down to the church and practiced the songs for our concert.
Turns out setting up could take quite a while, so we're going to get there an hour early, and since we're first up, set up everything. We also might be able to practice a couple of songs before hand when everyone's coming in.
So our practice went well. It was a bit weird playing in a massive room rather than our small sitting-room, but we gradually got used to it. I think another one or two practices within the week should get it all sorted.
See you there,
nate

ALPHA!!!!!

Wow I just got back from a real epic Alpha course up in Upper Hutt. It was soooooooo amazing! I learnt so much stuff, that even my notes were exciting!!!!! I accediently discovered the bestest trick ever for McDonalds. It's even cooler than the flying gherkin. We even went touring Wellington.
It was intense.
Got 2 go.
Jords

no youth group tonite...

Well, tonight there is no Youth Group cause the leaders and some of the oldies are away at a leadership course. Jords, Mum, and Beka went at 6 so I'm a bit bored. Yep. They all get back tomorow night sometime.
Catch ya later,
nate

$1000!!!!! 8-0

wow today beka checked the mail, and she won $1000 from a Ucol competition she entered! yes $1000... everyone was like wow.... pretty awesome aye
nate

10 days till zero

Or to put it other words, 10 days until we're rocking it up at the variety concert.
We practiced four of our songs today in front of our music teachers (and Mum!) and it was real good. We knew the songs so well that we did them pocket as and I even chilled a bit and started rocking, which up until now I've found pretty hard to do in front of people outside our family. But hey. All sweet now. We've got them sorted and the confidence levels seem pretty high. Hopefully it stays like that!
Daryl helped us a bit with our key change by adding a extra drumbeat. It sounds way better and we stay on time to.
So. It's all set.
Apparently this Variety concert is getting a bit offhand. They've not just got people from our church in, but heaps of other randoms as well. Which doesn't sound like a good idea. It's going to be about 4 hours long!
Way overboard, if you ask me.
So our teachers were saying they might be cutting it in two, one for the kids and stuff and one for the adult performers, which would work out well for us could we could play more than 2 songs!
Anyway, we have yet to see what will transpire.
Oh-and I'm going away tomorrow for a leadership course. =) Fun-I'm just not so confident about my leader qualities. I'm good at talking in small groups, or as front man for our band, but I hate doing get up and speak kinda things cos I get so nervous.
Terrible aye?

Jordan

All I have to say....

......is that previous post was probably undoubtedly one of the weirdest blogs ever. But it's been an infamous 'one- of- those-days' day.
That phrase is so cliched it's unbelievable.
I hate cliche's.
Every time I hear a song or a phrase which has already been done a million squijillion times over it really annoys me.
Sometimes I think I would enjoy life more if I spent it attempting to break every cliche ever.
Finish this sentence.
His legs were pumping up and down like..........
Just don't finish it with "pistons." It's the obvious choice.
My ending would be "His legs were pumping up and down like thin strands of spaghetti.
This blog is confusing me.
It's like life.
And maths.
And myself.
I think I'm to confusable. I don't understand myself, so how on earth can I understand what's going on around me?
I'm such a selfish person sometimes. I can't bear not to watch the next episode of Stargate. I can't bear to let Josh off for annoying me. I can't bear to do only two songs at the variety concert. I can' bear to be patient.
Mum always says there's a lesson in everything. Question is whether you see it or not. And half the time I don't.
This is my paradox; I have a fear of failure, but I fear I'm failing.
Oh God save me from myself.

Jordan

P.s I'm hoping things make sense tomorow.

Life is good

There's a song called Life is Good by a band called Stellar Kart.
Some days I think the song should be called Life is Weird.
The End
Jordan

At six in the morning...

Wow this is our 300th blog!

Okayyyy, so this morning i woke up at six... yes, without my alarm!

And so i got up and loaded the papers into our bikes in the dark. It was very dark yes. The other guys got up and since it was dark we couldn't really leave. So we just sat on our bikes and talked. I took a picture of us on my phone:

okay, that didn't turn out how i thought it would.... hmmm... maybe the tone was on night settings. it really was dark tho. we could see each other, but my phone's lighting isn't too good. you can just see something down the bottom.

yeah so then i jumped on the tramp which was quite scary in the dark.

finally at 6-45 we left and yea the rest is pretty much boring.

nate

Back in the day (well, 2 years ago actually.)

There was a band I used to quite like, back in the day. I think it was one of the first cds I've bought. That band was Leeland who have since released a second album. Which I haven't got.
I wouldn't say they're my favourite band. Several things annoy me (I'm a hard guy to please haha.) No actually, it's mostly the lead singer, Leeland's voice. Admittedly I also don't like the name or their appearence either.
But anyway..........
Today I randomly decided to listen to their cd and came to the last song-Carried to the Table. And I still like it. Of course, now I reckon it's probably their best one, rather than one of their 'rockier' ones.
It's kinda good when that happens. It reminds you of the before-back when our band did't even have our keyboard, I hadn't picked up the guitar yet, and we still thought the Lads were the coolest thing since sliced bread (Lately, news has caught our ears of the Lads turning into a 'kiddie band'-urghh!)
I love memories

Jordan

okay...

okay, so today was pretty fun... we went shopping. Mum forgot the banking so raced home to get it. so me and jords and dan were stuck with a shopping list and a trolley. Lol we managed it till she came tho it was quite funny.
so we came home and finally got around to band practice, (we haven't dun it for almost a week!!) yea we have been sooo busy. turns out we have ten minutes onstage at the variety concert and we might be able to fit three songs in. we timed them and it was 12 and a half minutes, so we're going to check it out with Gary. can't be too sure yet though.
and besides that, not much.....
nate

Two weeks left.....

Okay, its kind of a long story, but it turns out we can only do two songs at the variety concert.
So after a bit of thinking, we made up our minds for the two songs that we're going to do. A bit annoying, but we're still going ahead with it.
And another thing, no idea why, but the Variety concert starts at 1:30 now. And we're first up!
nate

How it went

Well it went better than expected.
Worship this morning that is.
I bumbled my way through quite a few songs, forgot to take my capo off and started playing the first line of the song in the complete wrong key. The last one went great though. Anyway, it doesn't really matter to much cos as my guitar teacher said, roughly: "It's not about the way you play, just remember that God will be looking down on you and smiling." So I remembered that in the middle of all my mistakes, and figured God doesn't dwell on perfection, he dwells on the heart.
Then George, our minister preached a awesome sermon about 'the Hulk in all of us'. You can tell a sermon's good when I remember it! It was basically talking about how we have things which we really get fired up about from the holy spirit, and sometimes we're afraid of that enthusiasm we have.
We didn't end up doing band practice cos Dad had a headache. We seriously have to get practicing cos we only have two weeks to get everything up to scratch.
I also finally finished my song today. Hopefully it works out, cos some songs just don't.
So. Today was probably the least busiest day of the week and we still didn't get stuff done!
Oh, the other mint thing about today was this really cool song a friend told me to look up. It's called Pieces and it's by a band called Red who I wouldn't usually listen to. They are like a hard-rock band, and kinda look sorta screamo (which is by far the worst type of music [if you can call it that!] ever.) But anyway this song was real quiet, like acoustic guitar, piano, drums, you know. It was real cool.
I never thought I'd say that about Red.

Jordan

P.s Apologies to anybody who likes screamo. It's an acquired taste. I prefer to actually hear the words thank you.

6-strings(well five now)

More information!
We are playing first act, as Nate said so please make sure you get there bright and early. It starts at 1.30 pm on Sunday 29th, so that's pretty much straight after church.
Well, I managed to get some guitar strings strings today. All six of them because I will probably break another few.
Today was mostly spent practicing the songs for church. We got them pretty much sorted. Oh, and I had a soccer game too. That was pretty intense. We got smoked though-like 11-3. I almost scored a goal but hit the side net.
And I changed my string to, so with any luck we'll be able to fit in a spot of band practice tommorrow.
Jordan

We're number 1# act!

Wow guess what?
At Youth Group last nite me and Jords heard some news about the Variety Concet. We're on first! Yes, we're the number 1# act! (So don't be late!) Haha we'll probably scare everyone away. Nah, we're not that bad.
So then we walked home from youth group at quarter to ten and sat down in the middle of our street and had an epic picnic. (a piece of Ally's birthday cake) We talked for a bit about stuff, then went home. It was pretty awesome.
nate

Good day, bad day

I should write a song called that.
Well today was a good day and a bad day. We didn't do band practice cos my string broke yesterday. It was annoying. So we played all our acoustic songs, all five of them. Make up Your Mind sounded especially good. It was probably the most chilled-out band practice we'd ever had. And it sounded good.
So. I've got to buy a set of replacement strings. Just in case I break another one before the concert.
I think I play to hard.
Anyway we wouldn't have had time to do it today cos Thursday is by far the busiest day ever. I didn't even do my guitar cos I had to go to soccer practice. Then it was back home for babysitting until now.
My goodness. Time to cut back on something.
Then again, I did have to double my schoolwork, cos tomorrow we're going to Palmy so Daryl has to give us our lessons in the morning.
Apparently I'm playing guitar at church on Sunday. Eek. Not sure I'm up to the job. I only have 3 days to learn it in. I don't even know what we're playing. I'm not exactly the quickest learner either.
Sooooooooooooo........
Our concert songs: Going OK at the moment. We still can't figure out our opening songs. I want to go for our hardest rocker, but maybe that's not such a good idea cos we're playing for mainly our church. Any ideas?

Tonight: Swell. We made a movie, and hung out with our mates. It was pretty good.

Songwriting: Stuck on the chorus. Ironically the song is called Speechless. I'm not kidding!

Song of the Day: Safe to say by Playjerise. They are so awesome. At the moment I'm really getting into the accoustic sound. Which we would be able to do if Mayday had another guitarist.

On the whole: Awesome thanks.

Jordan

Hello everyone

A weird thing just happened.
I clicked 'Sign In' to sign in to my blog, and instead of saying username/ password, which it usually does, it just signed me straight into my blog.
Odd.
But extremly handy.
Right at the moment, I've been listening to Philmont. Their music video for the Difference is extremly funny.
Actually the most funny music video I've seen is by the Afters. It's a song called Myspace Girl and there's all these cartoon charecter's in it. My goodness, it's a crack up.
Hopefully we can one day make up a music video that good.
It'd be fun to try.
We have attempted one music video but it sucked. Honestly. Please do not go and look at it. Otherwise you will probably never come back to our blog again as you will be suffering a severe attack of "oh -that-is -so -pathetic." syndrome.
Sorry.
But it's true.
However, as I always say we are quite a lot better now.
We have quite a handful of better songs.
I will attempt to get some music on our blog though. It's about time we started broadcasting our music even if we don't have a myspace profile.
[Because if we did, some creepy person could start STALKING us and we would get rather worried and spend a lot of time underground avoiding our stalker.
How would we get underground anyway? Practicly the only underground place in our small town is the thing which goes under the railway and some people call it a subway but it's not really a subway cos if it was there would be trains roaring through it not over it therefore it wouldn't be the bestest option, anyway it's creepy enough under there already without a stalker on the loose.]
So yes. I will attempt to get something out there even though I don't know how on earth you'd put music on your blog.

Jordan

monday

Well well today was the usual Monday. Yes, a bit dull. Back to school, the odd paper-run, band practice, normal life again.
We were going to spice up one of our older songs today, but decided not to, cause we'd have to practise it a lot too get it going. And we have a concert in three weeks so have to focus on the songs we're doing for it. We have three of our older songs from our old days of piano, and acoustic guitar. No drums. No microphones. No electric guitar. The songs are'nt bad, actually, so they're next on the list.
nate

I luvvv this picture:

Haha we're so insane
nate

Something worth remembering.

I love church camp.
This years one was definitly the best. We stayed in the Youth Group Dorms, and had so much fun dropping pillows on unsuspecting heads.
We had an awesome speaker called Elliot. He stayed the entire weekend which is something none of our speakers have ever done before. His speach thing was pretty mean- something about demolishing your own temples and letting God build his one. This kinda struck home because for a long time I have been guilty of doing this-imagining us playing on bigger stages, to cheering audiences, death circles, etc............. but I don't think that's what God wants us to do at the moment.
Otherwise we'd be doing it.
We have to get our focus right. What's more important, to praise God with stringed instruments, organs, and loud cymbals (Psalm 150: 4-5) or to seek after the praise ofpeople?
So yeah. That was what I got from it.
The other cool thing about Elliot was he got to know us real well and we ended up having an epic chat with him on Saturday night about all sorts of stuff.
We had an mean soccer game in the pouring rain on Saturday. I got so soaked and my team ended up losing but it was awesome anyway.
We went to the beach to swim but it was freezing so we watched a dramatic rescue of some lifeguards who'd been swept out to sea. This rescue involved a jet ski, a motorboat and a helecopter which landed in the carpark.
But thankfuly God was working and no one was drowned, and they all got safely back.
Sunday was just about as awesome. There was four baptisms down at the beach. The sea was real nice. It was awesome to watch the four people give their lives to God like I did two years ago at the exact same beach.
Then we went back to camp and had communion and lunch, before packing up. Elliot left (apparently he had to get back for band practice- far more dedicated than me! Dad said he was in a hip hop band. Nate however is convinced he's Brad Dring from Rapture Ruckus [which he isn't, obviously]. But anyway....) pretty soon after lunch and then we packed up and left about 5ish.
It was truly awesome.
Now. I better get off the computer before I get in trouble.

Jordan

Must get on with it

Right so it is now only 21 days give or take until our first concert.
And we so far we havn't even had a decent practice this month.
We really need to get on with it.
One thing I hate is not having enough time.
Today we spent five hours delivering papers.
And that takes a huge chunk out of your day.
It was quite annoying. But hey, it's a job.
Somethings got to pay the bills.
Not that I have any.
The best thing right now is Fairtrade chocolate from the store in Palmy which Beka got for us and it was real cheap and it tastes soooooooooooooooo good like actual chocolate rather than dark stuff which is 80% cocoa which is really not sweet enogh for my sweet tooth.

Jordan

storm the heights...

Last night at Youth Group we went to the Lamason's farm and played storm the heights. The aim of the game was to capture the other team's flag, and not get your life (a piece of string on your wrist) ripped off. If you did get your life ripped off, you had to go to the "hospital" to at another one.
So it was boys vs. girls for the first game. It was soooo fun. You could get stabbed by prickles, tread through marshes, get soaking wet, fall in the river, get killed a million times, and get leapt on, but it didn't matter. It was the craziness of it all that was the funnest. We had the most epic time ever.
In the second game we swapped bases and i killed 2 people!!!!! I also got killed three times, but that was fun. We captured the flag finally and won.
So yea man it was awesome,
Bring on storm the heights 2010!
nate

Summer of 69

We haven't been up to much lately cause I've been sick, but feeling a bit better today. better enough for band practice, anyway.
We did our new song, Fight for Something that's Worth Everything, and it went really well. We did the keychange pretty much perfect. I probably wasn't meant to mention that, but... yea, we did do it probably the best we've ever done it....
And we're doing a cover song. Its called Summer of 69, by Bryan Adams. Daryl assigned it to us last week. Its actually a pretty cool song.
A bit eighties, but still cool.
nate

Several things I like

My eletric guitar (even if it's strings break on the occasion which is probably my fault for playing so hard and also I've learnt that if you leave the guitar overnightafter changing it's string it gives the new string a chance to stretch so it won't break so easy.)

Driving.

Our new song.

Relient K.

Custard.

Music.

My family.

Church camp.

Postive thinking.

And Parachute. Definitly Parachute.

Jordan

Several things I hate

Broken guitar strings.

Not being able to play two guitars at the same time.

My mp3.

People being sick.

Not having a new Soul Purpose magizene cos they stupidly decided to combine Spring/Summer edition so that's only 3 Soul Purpose's a year and that's so not enough.

People having headaches.

Peaches. (On the occasion-mostly because we've been bottling them for two days)

Not enough books.

Negative thinking.

Jordan

(Hang on-skip that last part-it sounds like I hate myself!)
(Which I don't.)

Not a lot

Well, not a lot has been happening lately.
Other than church camp which was awesome.
The best part was the epic conversation with Elliot up in the loft above the youth group room.
The worst part was leaving.
Oh and Beka's trooped off to Ucol.
And we've got a concert in under a month.

Jordan

I believe

I believe that you gotta believe in yourself

And I'm not talking about all the riches and wealth

I'm talking about God of the heavens, God of the stars,

I think He understands and he knows who you are

I believe.......

-Rapture Ruckus

church camp

Church Camp was awesome.... as usual. Every year gets better and better. The only annoying thing was that we didn't get to swim much. We went to swim on Saturday, but the lifeguards were in trouble. About seven of them had gone out to sea (within eyesight) in a rubber dingy to practise, when they felt they were being pulled out to sea. So one swam back and raised the alarm. A speed boat zoomed out to the rescue, but the wind was so strong that it flipped. Then its motor wouldn't go.

Twenty minutes later, a speedboat sped out to the rescue, and another boat went, too. They were on their way back with the rescued lifeguards and the boat that had flipped. Then a rescue helicopter came in. Some of the adults were screaming cause they thought it was going to land on the beach. But it swung over our heads and landed in the car park.

So everyone got back safe and there were no injuries as far as we know. Although on the way back to camp we saw an ambulance heading towards the beach.

We never did get to swim, but the soccer game was still on (unlike the gumboot throw!). It was an awesome game anyway. We beat the teenagers 8 - 6.

And on Sunday the weather finally cleared up. After the baptisms, we had a five minute swim. The sea wasn't actually that cold. So yea it was nice.

We had this real cool speaker called Elliot. This is him:

He had exactly the same hairstyle as Brad Dring from Rapture Ruckus. He actually knew Brad though! Anyway, he was the man. He actually stayed and talked with us the whole weekend. Most other speakers just come when they're needed.
So all in all it was a mean weekend. Bring on Church Camp 2010!
nate