School

Today Sarah got up early and reported to the first day of BYU Marching Band Camp!  She was a bit nervous, but all those feelings went away as they got to know each other and started working on fundamentals and drills.  She says that she has a wonderful section that she can’t wait to get to know better!

While Sarah was working hard out in the hot sun, Angela drove up to Bountiful to attend the funeral of her Great Aunt Grace.  She was the sweetest lady and always had a smile on her face.  Her passing was very timely for Angela to be able to attend and she got to see some family members that she hadn’t seen in awhile.

When Angela and Sarah called home tonight, they were very tired but happy!  Sarah’s first day went great and she can’t wait until tomorrow!  They have some “re-auditions” to “place” them, and Sarah is nervous!  🙂  You’ll do GREAT little lady!  🙂

Today was Sarah’s first full day in Provo!   Since things really haven’t started up yet and her ward did not meet, Angela picked up Sarah and they went to church with  Greg and Lisa.  It turns out that there is a rule that Angela can’t stay in Sarah’s room, even though she is her mom, so Angela is staying with Greg and Lisa while she’s out there.  That was a real let-down for Angela and she was bummin’ about it.

Anyway, after church, they enjoyed the afternoon, and then Sarah went to a Sunday night marching band fireside to kick off the season.  Marching band camp starts tomorrow and she can’t wait to get going and meet new people, learn new things, and have a blast!  She can’t wait for that feeling to perform in front of 65,000 fans!  🙂

Sarah got a new piccolo the other day because they don’t march with flutes at BYU in the marching band.  She’s pretty spoiled!  A new open-hole flute for Christmas, and now a new $1,100 piccolo for band!  She’s not even gone yet and we already feel the sucking sound for money from Provo!  🙂 She has started up her lessons again to get prepped for her marching band camp in about 10 days.  We can’t believe she is already leaving.  🙁

Today we got an e-mail out of the blue that Sarah had made the BYU Marching Band!  She was so excited when she found out that I thought she was going to hyperventilate!  🙂  She had given up hope that she would make it and boy was this a great surprise!  Since they don’t march with flutes in the band, we now have to buy her a piccolo which is going to set us back quite a bit!  😐  Oh well, just to see the excitement and joy on her face makes it worth it!  🙂

The cool thing is that three kids from our area are in the band… Sarah (piccolo) and Hannah (color guard) from our ward, and Kristen (piccolo) from the 4th ward.  It really helps to come from a grammy-winning district!  🙂

Go Cougars, go Sarah, and go Cougar Marching Band!

Today was a busy day in our household!  Kirstyn started her 2nd year of Engineering Camp at Northern Illinois University and is looking forward to a great week.  She’s going to the camp with Ashley Smith, one of her best friends, so they should have a wonderful time.

Ben and Zach also started swimming lessons.  They were so excited yesterday when we were talking about it!  They absolutely LOVE water and are not quite to where they could live in it, but they sure want to!  🙂  They did a great job their first day and Zach is now talking about doing swimming on a team rather than football.  He seems pretty serious about it so he may not play this fall.  We’ll see.

Tonight, Angela and I went over to Chip Staley’s house (the fine arts chair at Neuqua Valley High School in our district) for an ARTSpeaks group BBQ and meeting.  We had a wrap-up discussion about the results of the Fine Arts Festival and what we heard and learned from attendees there.  It was great to hear what had happened at the other 2 schools as well.  We then had dinner and relaxed outside in their huge back yard.  They have cool planter boxes and Angela ribbed me for not building some for us.  🙂  It’s great to be involved in this group.  We are now building relationships with more and more people (including all three fine arts chairs at the high schools) and other community members.  Every time we meet, Angela and I come away feeling energized about our involvement in community and school efforts.