Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a quiet, relaxed, snowy day at our house this year. Only Scott's parents were joining us for dinner. We enjoyed watching it snow while we prepared the food, though of course that meant Scott had to run out to pick up his parents while I finished off the preparations.Everything was tasty, as usual, if I do say so myself. But who let these grown-up looking kids come to the party? What is with this getting bigger every year schtick?
Happy Thanksgiving, all! We are thankful for much in our lives. God has truly blessed our family.

Drama on a Shoestring

My drama kids have been working on the sets for Night at the Wax Museum, our next production. Considering we have no budget and a bunch of sixth graders working on the sets (all the upperclassmen got parts in the play this time) they're coming together slowly, but surely. Because the museum is full of various historical characters, we get to build backdrops from many eras.

We have these rustic saloon doors (scrap wood and foam core):

A 6' panel from an ancient Egyptian tomb (paper and paint):


Another 6' backdrop of Independence Hall (more paper and paint - still needs a lot of work):


And this rotating stone wall, very much in progress (Old equipment cart, cardboard, newspaper, and lots and lots of masking tape):


Sometimes I wonder what we could do with more than one adult, an actual budget, and a stage. But then I say, "Eh. Who needs 'em?"

(Except the stage. Can't WAIT until I get my stage. Less than 200 days until the new building!)

Go. Go U. Go U Mass. Go UMass!

Must have heard that chant six hundred times this weekend if I heard it once. The marching band went to UMass for their annual band day. Over 3000 marching band kids. One stadium. Can you say LOUD?



You can play "Where's Waldo?" with the above picture to find Nick if you like. He got to play his actual trombone because they did not use honor guards in the display. Just look for the youngest one in the group - he is only ten, after all! He kept not knowing he was supposed to sit when they would say "High Schoolers, sit down!" They meant high schoolers as opposed to the UMass college kids. But he's not even out of elementary school, so how was he supposed to react to that?



And somewhere in this shot is Kai.

It was a pretty crazy trip. We got up at 2AM, showered, and headed over to the school. We then boarded buses headed for Amherst. We stopped at a Burger King for breakfast and then arrived at UMass around 10. The kids hustled over to the stadium where they spent three hours practicing. They did practice the songs a few times, but mostly they practiced the logistics of getting 3000 kids on and off the field in a 15 minute half-time.

After lunch at the university cafeteria, we headed back for the actual game. I had been playing with the panorama feature on my camera during practice, but as you can see from the shot at the top of this post, I was having trouble lining up the shots. Finally got it - but they put the band parents BEHIND the band for the show. *sigh*



Of course, I have to admit, it was probably easier to seat this many marching band members on the visitor side:



The whole day was in honor of George Parks, the UMass band director who unexpectedly passed away during the season. I have to admit, even though I had never met him, I teared up every time the UMass Minutemen played "I'll Be There" and marching into the formation of his initials. Their band was awesome, and the football team won. After we watched their set at the end of the game, we headed for the hotel. It was really cold, so we were glad to get inside. So what did all the kids do? Jumped in a pool (and one across the street from the main hotel so they had to run through the cold in their bathing suits.

We finally got back around 4:30 on Sunday. It was a loooooong weekend, but a great experience. Both the kids loved band day. Both agreed they could have done without the boring second day of the trip. (We basically drove home, and stopped at a mall for lunch.) I think they were just bumming because marching band season is now officially over. They hardly know what to do with themselves!