There’s a 104 days of Summer Vacation…..

We were driving in the car and were talking about all the things we’ve done this summer vacation. We’ve had a lot of fun and done so many things, that we have started to lose track. We had been all over the place this summer, from California to Nevada’s deserts, to Utah’s eastern mountains. We had been on rollercoaster rides (like the X2), in thunderstorms in a tent, 550 feet above the ground, etc. Add in a move, and job change . . . it’s just been a packed summer vacation.

We started fiddling with the words from the title song from Phineas and Ferb, listing our adventures instead of theirs. It was cute. But we let it alone for a while. My husband is not the biggest fan of Phineas and Ferb. I, however, think the show is super fun and fantastical.

Later, we came back to the song again. We were driving in the car and the song came up. I should say came out, rather spontaneously. (I try to respect my husband feelings, usually.) I started changing the lyrics, like before. I had gotten through a few lines with our adventures listed, but had stopped – stumped with the rhyming and syllables.
This time my husband looked at me (which was attention getting because he was driving) and said, “You know, you could make a music video out of that for the kids. It would be a great way for them to introduce themselves to their classmates when school starts.”

Well, that required a little research into the song’s rhythm and rhyming schemes, which meant watching a lot of Phineas and Ferb on Netflix. Two days full of Phineas and Ferb episodes later, I had the song’s lyrics, rhyme scheme, and syllables mapped out. The song’s original writers had written the lyrics and music very cleverly. It was fun to listen and break down the way the song worked. Disney makes good songs.

After that, we listed all the activities we’d done as a family this summer vacation. Then, I looked at what could rhyme in the right places and what had the right number of syllables to go where. My husband took an editing role, and cleaned up some of the trickier phrases. Then we spent a week teaching our kids the words.

After all that, we got to shoot the various films and edit the audio and visual elements together. It’s our family’s first attempt at an actual music video. We hope you enjoy the journey.