Folkiedave, you have described well the method the Zahasky family uses. The family practises a great deal and I remember when Abby (Abigail) used to stand alongside them with a mando or a fiddle in hand and just strike the occasional lick. She still doesn't play on every number but she now has her own little band with kids her own age and they sound good.

Sins, it is an amazing story, in my mind. Linda and Jack started out taking in foster kids and then started adopting some of them. Even now they are an emergency drop for kids of all ages.

Linda admired my mother a great deal- over the years my mother took in more than 30 children, ending up adopting two of them. She had 9 kids of her own and Linda quips that she is just like her grandmother: She had two kids and adopted nine.

How she and her husband do it, I don't quite know. I do know they are very hands on people, spending lots of time with their family and Linda also attends all kinds of conferences and seminars. They also are outdoorsy people- their main away-from-activity over the years has been camping in National and State Parks. In Oregon, where they live, adoptive/foster parents park for free.

Two years ago they bought a large motor home and took the whole family on a three-month tour of America, spending several weeks in the Washington DC area. This was while they were a-waiting the delivery and installation of a custom-built mobile home that would fit all of them. They parked the mobile home on their daughter an son in law's land and Linda often cooks the evening meal at the main house for all of them, including her daughter and son in law..

Linda and Jack's daughter, Jacqui, is cast in the same mold as her mother- and is perhaps even more so. She is a Nurse Practitioner and a midwife as well as teaching nursing in George Fox College.