Background Music for Adventure

We have a subscription to Spotify and spend many an hour of evening chores listening to playlists we've created there. Thinking about our summer travel plans, including the Grand Adventure, I decided to purchase a few of our favorite songs and make a CD to take along with us. Not only would we fill some of the driving time with music, we'd be giving the children a soundtrack of our own for our Grand Adventure.

After making the first CD of songs Kansas Dad and I especially like, I realized it might be fun for the children to choose some favorite songs as well.

In the interests of revealing exactly the kind of people we are, here are our 2016 playlists.

Kansas Dad and Kansas Mom's Vacation CD

• Girl of My Dreams by Brandon Heath on No Turning Back*
• Sing Brave by Brandon Heath on No Turning Back*
• London by Brandon Heath on What if We*
• Love Never Fails by Brandon Heath on What if We*
• Best Thing by Adam and I on Meanwhile in Virginia*
• If I'm Taken by Adam and I on Adam and I*
• We Have Love by Adam and I on Adam and I*
•  Be Kind to Yourself by Andrew Peterson on The Burning Edge of Dawn*
• After the Last Tear Falls (2014 version) by Andrew Peterson on After All These Years: A Collection*
• The Silence of God (2014 version) by Andrew Peterson on After All These Years: A Collection*
• Lovely Tonight by Joshua Radin on Wax Wings*
• Lead Me by Sanctus Real on Pieces of a Real Heart*
• Time Is Love by Josh Turner on Punching Bag*
• Small Things with Great Love by Danielle Rose on I Trust**
• Marianne by L'Angelus on Ça C'est Bon**
• Ça C'est Bon by L'Angelus on Ça C'est Bon** 
• The River by Garth Brooks on The Hits*** (I guess Garth isn't into digital music.)
• Unanswered Prayers by Garth Brooks on The Hits***
• Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts on Feels Like Today***  

We also took a number of CDs that we own, particularly those by Christopher Williams and Carolyn Arends. My Christopher Williams favorites are The Silence in Between and When I was Everything. We often saw him perform years and years ago in Boston and New York. I happily packed along Just Getting Started, which you can download for free here. (I contributed to the campaign to create the album. You're welcome.)

I asked each of the children to choose three songs for their own vacation CD. I could almost have made this CD without asking. I love how this collection of songs perfectly captures who they are right now.

• The Force Theme (from Star Wars IV: A New Hope) by String Player Gamer*
• The Weekend Whip (Lego Ninjago Official Theme Song) by The Fold* (It took a surprising amount of time to find the exact requested song on iTunes, and I never did on Amazon. None of the remixes would do.)
• The Noon Balloon from Goodnight Songs*
• Everything Is Awesome on The Lego Movie Soundtrack*
• Another Irish Drinking Song by the Minions on the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack*
• Let It Go from the Frozen soundtrack*
• Matchmaker, Matchmaker from Fiddler on the Roof***
• If I were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof***
• Sabbath Prayer from Fiddler on the Roof*** (I picked this one.)
• I Just Can't Wait to be King from The Lion King soundtrack*
• Hakuna Matata from The Lion King soundtrack*
• I've Got a Dog from Sandra Boynton's Frog Trouble*
• 47 Beavers on the Big Blue Sea by Phil Vischer***
• Camouflage by Braid Paisley on This Is Country Music*
• The Lion Sleeps Tonight (re-recorded version) by the Tokens*
• Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi from Slippery When Wet***

I also purchased And Now It's Time for Silly Songs with Larry because it was a recent favorite and inexpensive.

As always, we took complete copies of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Fiddler on the Roof, both CDs we've own for (cough) decades.

In order to save space, I sometimes burned MP3 copies of CDs with multiple CDs on the same disk. Going forward, I think I'd sacrifice space to have just one album on each disk because we often got tired of listening to the same kind of music and wanted to switch but then it was hard to find our spot on the CD again. Obviously, if you have a fancy phone or music-playing technological doodad, this is less of a problem. (We bought a smartphone for the trip, but without the kind of memory we'd need to put the music on it.)

I do wish we had taken along some classical music particularly suited to the landscape. There were times I wanted something like Beethoven or Mozart, but I hadn't brought anything along. We're hoping to visit Rocky Mountain National Park later this summer (since we missed it on the Grand Adventure) so if you have recommendations for a classical piece evocative of mountains and alpine environments, please let me know.

* purchased on iTunes
** purchased on Amazon with a free MP3 credit
*** owned on CD

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