National Quartet Convention September 2006 - 09/20/06
Courtney and I had one of our most important basketball games of the year on Tuesday, so we decided we couldn’t skip it since we have a very small team. Hailey and Taylor came to the game and we left for Louisville, Kentucky after the game was finished. We quickly took showers at my aunt’s house as we would arrive very late to the hotel and had 3 showcases scheduled for the next day. Our dads had left earlier on Monday to get our booth set up and ready. We drove for six hours down to Kentucky stopping once for supper at Wendy’s. We arrived at the hotel at around 1:30-2:00AM and quickly went to our rooms and fell asleep. The next morning we had a showcase at 10:00 so we didn’t get much sleep. Our first one was the Southern Gospel Music Lovers Showcase, at which we sang, “Grace Steps In” and “Let It Fall.” It went great and everyone there loved it! Right after we sang we had to rush down the hall to the Southern Gospel Promoters Association Showcase. This is an important one where all the people who schedule concerts go. We sang, “He’ll Complete the Task” and “You Did It Anyway.” It went great and we had a lot of promoters come up and ask us for further information and for our CD. After that we headed over to our booth to relax on our couch (last year we only had folding chairs and they weren’t very comfy so we brought a small couch this year.) We went and found some of our friends from last year, Matt Gooch, Adam Brown, Anthony Harris, Caylon, and Andrew. Matt and Julie Seerveld, our sound guy and his wife who help us out a lot, got there just in time for our last showcase; it was the Regional Showcase on one of the bigger stages. We sang a song my dad just wrote called, “A Whole Lotta Nothin’”. It was AWESOME! Everybody went wild! We did the best we’ve ever done! We stayed at the convention until 11:15 and then went back to get some much needed sleep. The Seervelds found a surprise back at their hotel room. The next day (Thurs) we had a GREAT breakfast at the hotel. They make the food right there for you, it was great! Then we went to the mall for a while because the booths didn’t open until 4:00. Once we were at the Convention Center, some guy that owned a radio station came over and asked us to be on the radio that same evening. We said yes and were interviewed on the radio. It was really fun! He asked us a lot of questions and played some songs off of our CD. We were going to sing, ”Jesus Take the Wheel” a cappella, but we couldn’t find the starting pitch. Ginger came just in time with the pitch and we nailed it! We drew a huge crowd around the radio booth. It was sweet! Then at the end of the interview he asked us to do another a cappella song so we did, “Star Spangled Banner”. As you probably know all patriotic songs are really hard to sing because they’re all so high. When we do them at our concerts we do them really low. Well, we couldn’t find the starting pitch for that song either and ended up singing it way higher than we were supposed to! It was really high but we pulled it off. The last day the moms went shopping in the morning (again!) and we went with the dads to an intellectually stimulating movie. When we got to the NQC building we took pictures with all our friends, The Crabbs, Mike Bowling, and some other people. We went to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse for supper as a surprise from my dad and had some AWESOME steak and mashed potatoes!!! Then we went and watched the Hoppers, The Martins, The Kingsmen, Gold City, and the Crabbs at Freedom Hall. The next morning we slept in and drove the six hours back to Grand Rapids Michigan. We can’t wait for next year! Arielle Baker

Thanksgiving Benefit Concerts - 12/18/05
Every two years we put on a big Thanksgiving Benefit Concert at Bethany URC church. The concert typically involves a 70-80 voice choir (directed by my mom), the Suwyn family (also called Country Praise-which is 4 brothers that have sung together for many years), and the Baker/Pasma families. This year we had an offering to benefit Costa Rican missions. We do the same concert both Friday and Saturday night for crowds of over 1,000. People love the variety they get with choir, southern gospel, adults and kids choir along with a beautiful organ/piano prelude! We have a lot of fun because we get to dress up fancy and there's a lot of excitement with all the people. We meet downstairs in the choir room to quick go through some details-we had a couple of songs that were new to us all so that needed some work last minute and we prayed. Then we all filed upstairs and into the sanctuary. The first night we started a little late, there's always some confusion to deal with! The house was packed and we even had to set up chairs to fit all the people despite there being a snow storm outside! Everything went really well and everyone sounded great! There were other soloists and small ensembles that sang along with the choir and some kids that were part of a kid’s choir also did some solos. A great experience! One of my favorites that we (the girls) sang was "My Redeemer" and we performed it with the choir. In fact, it was my absolute favorite! After Friday's concert we went to Steak and Shake with some of Bakers and the Suwyns happen to be there also. Well, Saturday was pretty much a repeat of Friday except we were less nervous! Titus Baker (3 years old) was really cute when he came up on stage and did an adorable 360 ninja twist in front of everybody! Dr. Randy was telling everyone how Titus was potty trained now and told everyone the amount of diapers they've gone through with 9 kids! Pretty hilarious! (Just over 32,000 to be exact!) Besides a few minor mic problems, a couple forgotten words and Levi having a frog in his throat on "Give Thanks", I think things went real well and it was really fun! The collection for Costa Rica came to around $7,000 and money is still coming in from people ordering CDs and DVDs. Everyone enjoyed bringing praises and thanks to God! Happy Thanksgiving! Taylor Pasma

National Quartet Convention - 09/29/05
Wed. Sept. 14_Right after Taylor and I got out of band at the Home school building we headed to Grandma’s house. Mom met us there and we all headed to Zion Chr. School to pick up Mrs. Baker, Courtney, and Arielle. After picking them up we went through Wendy’s for lunch, got gas and were on our way. We were headed for Louisville, KY for the National Quartet Convention (NQC) where the two dads had already gone. Dr. Baker and my dad arrived there yesterday (Tues.) to set up our booth. We had a really good ride to KY. We girls had lots of fun, playing games and watching movies - and practicing of course! We arrived there around 7:30, just in time for the evening concerts. We walked in and there had to be thousands of different booths all in a row. It was HUGGE! We found ours and kind of sat around for only a few minutes when 3 kids walked up, bought a CD and asked us to sign it! We were like WOW! we’re going to sell a million if it keeps up like this! One of the kids left his walkie talkie so we walked around to find him. We found them and they invited us to walk around with them. We checked out a bunch of booths and met a lot of new people. We found out the kid whose CD we signed was Matt Gooch – the son of Karen Peck Gooch (one of our favorites!) so that was cool. His other 2 friends were in smaller groups like ours-or should I say lesser known, since we’re a pretty large group! Matt introduced us to Calon Freeman, the drummer for the Freemans. We talked to him for a while. He was nice. Then we also met his friends, Anthony, Andrew, Adam and others. It was really fun because we thought we would just be sitting around and not know anyone but we actually met a lot of nice people thanks to outgoing Matt Gooch! So, pretty much what we did was hang out at our booth, walk around to get pictures & signatures, sit in the concert or eat! Yeah, we ate a lot of junk food. Mountain Dew, pizza and funnel cakes-even my personal favorite, ice cream! Thurs. Sept. 15 - We started off the day with a nice breakfast in our hotel. Then we went to Bakers room and practiced. Then we went out to the car and practiced our song (10 more times)! We had enough time to do a little shopping (no dads allowed!). The dads went to a couple showcases (smaller concerts held throughout the day at some of the hotels). At the shopping area we headed to Starbucks first! Courtney, Arielle, Taylor and I headed our own direction and bought a few little things. Grandma went to town! We met up later with the dads at Macaroni Grill. That was really good-except Dr. Baker had a pitcher of water spilled down his back! He was so nice about it-but he really was soaked! Late afternoon we headed back to the convention center to watch our booth and meet people. We got pictures with some of our favorite singers like Mike and Kelly Bowling, Jason Crabb, Adam and Aaron Crabb, Micah (the drummer for the Crabbs), Lauren Talley, and Josh Simpson (piano player for the Hoppers). Courtney and Arielle had a picture taken with Scott Fowler from Legacy 5 and our parents got to see Roger Bennet again. Roger had produced an album for our parents back before any of us girls were born! We gave some of our CD’s to people like Legacy 5, The Hoppers, The Crabbs, and more. Maybe they’ll listen?! We also listened to some great concerts. They’d start at 6:00 and go until midnight! Each night was like that - long but fun! Friday, Sept. 16 - Today is our big day!! Dr. Baker wants us to do a really good job at the Showcase. We’ve been practicing a lot so hopefully it pays off! We ate breakfast and then headed to the hotel to wait our turn! It started around 9 am and went until 3:00. We arrived there around 10:00. We listened to quite a few groups before us. Most did pretty good! We listened to Anthony (one of the guys we met) sing with his dad and brother, then all the sudden it was our turn! I was a little nervous. “Grace Steps In” was our first song. I think we did pretty well. I’ll say it wasn’t our best but definitely not our worst! Then all 8 of us sang “Presence of the Master”. That was good too! Besides a few minor difficulties in the sound -a little feedback and Taylor’s mic not being on - it wasn’t bad. It was over in a flash. All that time practicing and it goes so fast! But it was fun! We stayed for a while afterwards to listen to some other groups and talk with them. Then we went back to the convention center and did the same thing over again. We had decided to leave after the Crabbs (my favorite group) sang. They were on at 11:15 pm so we had all night to enjoy! We had a great time meeting new people and just experiencing what it’s like to be with a bunch of people who sing! We left that night with lots of great memories. Saturday, Sept. 17-We drove home. We practiced (of course) for our concert to be held in 1 week. This will be the first time we sing the songs from our new CD-I guess we’d better practice! We all had a wonderful time at the National Quartet Convention!

08/30/05
We left our house to head out to Faith Baptist Church in Greenville, MI. Dad, Dale, Jordan, and Malachi left earlier to set up, so it was just us girls, the moms, and the little boys. We had been on the road for about five minutes when we realized that Arielle had left her violin home, so we turned around and went back. Thankfully we figured out she left it before we got all the way there or we’d really been in a mess! Anyway, we got to the church and went in to begin a quick run through before the concert. Now, Titus, Isaac, and Blaze were at Grandma’s house, but the other boys were there. So, just as we walked into the sanctuary they spotted the baptismal tank. Well, we are brothers and sisters in Christ from a Reformed background so the boys had never seen one of these before. Colton came running over to me and my dad and said, “They’ve got a NICE hot tub here guys!!!” He was so serious and excited that it was hilarious! We had a good laugh, but then my dad explained to them what it was actually for, the boys were kind of bummed, they thought this church had a real live hot tub!! After we ran through some of our songs we got a drink, and waited till it was supposed to start. After a quick introduction from the minister Seth kicked things off with belting out the song “Who Am I”. The first half went flawlessly and sounded great! What a great bunch of people from Greenville! During the second half, when we were singing “Endless Season” us girls were doing our “moves” that we had done at the singing competition when I whipped my arm out and hit a music stand! The whole audience watched as it warbled back and forth and almost fell onto the keyboard! I quickly grabbed it during a warble and fortunately, nothing happened. Everybody got a little chuckle out of it but it was all good. It sure is great to praise God with our fellow believers. Overall we had a fantastic time, and everything went great!!!!!!!

Baker Pasma Families Girls' Diary - 08/24/05
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