My children, at least the A team and the older of the B team, were raised on Psalty and his kids, beginning with the REAL LP's! We thought we were so progressive when we got them all on cassette tape (I think we skipped the 8-Track stage!), and for years I guarded the originals and made copies for us to listen to in the car.

Somewhere around '95, when it was clear to me that A) CD's were here to stay, and B) cassettes were not going to be around for long, and C) my "store" of originals was now deteriorating quickly due to loss, age, and little fingers, I started looking for the series on CD. But these albums seemed to have vanished from the planet. Never mind that I had, during those years, three daughters who worked in Christian book stores and who, at irregular intervals did searches of all the known distributors--they were nowhere to be found!

My friends, insomnia DOES have a couple of silver linings. And one of them is that when faced with an interminable night and nothing better to do, I sometimes embark on nostalgic treasure hunts and come up with something wonderful. Pieces of my wedding china, dear books I grew up with, an ancient (1963) copy of my old Junior Girl Scout Manual...almost anything I can think of is waiting for me to find on some sleepless night.

So last week, on one of these dark nights of the soul cyberspace, I decided to see if I could track down our friends Psalty, Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Risky Rat, Charity Churchmouse and the Churchmouse Choir, alias "The Cheeses for Jesus." Yes, pretty cheesey, but these albums were so well-produced and contain such memorable music that they are part of us, and I'd love to be able to share them with my grandchildren.

Somewhere along 1:30am, I FOUND THEM! As far as I know, they're not available anywhere else (or I'd have found them way before this LOL), but this whole website is devoted to the Maranatha Kids Praise series and all the spinoffs. Quickly, before they disappeared into the internet ether or before I woke up from one of Charity's dreams, I hit "submit order" and was instantly grateful that I hadn't been able to sleep!

Yesterday, twelve of Psalty's best arrived at my doorstep, and today, faced with a couple of hours of downtime during the kids' co-op, I started uploading them into iTunes as fast as I could go. Now, barring some cyber-catastrophe like, say, digital music going the way of the 8-Track, I will have them forever and be able to share them with a generation yet unborn.

And while uploading, I wondered...does Charity Churchmouse know she's on iTunes??

Psalty CDs