School

Today Zachary started choir at Aspen View Academy!  He’s really excited and loves to sing.  They practice every Tuesday right after school.  We can’t wait to hear him perform!

Angela and I also had a date night sponsored by our ward’s Relief Society.  It was a dinner date night with a newlywed and not-so-newlywed game built in as well.  We had a lot of fun and laughed quite a bit at the couples up on stage.  We are feeling more and more a part of the area every time we do things like this and really have appreciated all the people who have been so kind to our family since we moved here.

Tonight we had curriculum night at Castle View High School!  As normal, Angela and I had to split up.  🙂  She went to Kirstyn’s schedule, and I went to Brittany’s schedule.  It was great meeting the girl’s teachers.  I think that they’ll have a GREAT year and learn a LOT!

Tonight the Marching Band had their first showcase (pre-competition) at Sports Authority Field in Parker (not the Sports Authority field where the Broncos play).  🙂  They did a GREAT job and played well.  By the end of the season, they’ll have an AWESOME show put together that should help them go a long way!

There were about 15 bands there performing and one of them was Thunderridge High School, the school where a good new friend of Brittany’s (Taylor Brandt) goes.  After they performed, he asked her to their homecoming!  🙂  She couldn’t have been more excited!  Two homecomings in one year at two different schools!

The kids had a ton of fun at the showcase and there is just something about marching band kids that is so cool!  They love to have a ton of fun as you can see from Kirstyn and her friend Jenna (who also is our Stake President’s daughter) below!  🙂  Kirstyn will kill me for posting this, but it’s all about the fun!

Great job tonight girls!  And…  Thanks Taylor for making Brittany’s night even better!

Tonight was curriculum night for Ben and we got to meet his teacher and learn about classroom activities.  Miss Kalaveshi is really nice and will be PERFECT for Ben!  It was awesome how much support the parents show for the school!  The whole gym was completely full for the intro presentation, and it was just for K-3!

At Aspen View (as with other charter schools), the parents are required to give 30 hours of service to the school per year which we think is GREAT!  That drastically increases parent involvement which is a wonderful thing!

Tonight was Castle View High School’s homecoming and Brittany got asked by Ammon Gatrell, a friend of hers she made in Seminary.  They went with a group of friends and had a GREAT time!

Julia Liddell wanted to see Brittany at her first Castle View Homecoming so she came over with us to take pictures as well!  🙂

Kirstyn didn’t go to the dance, but she dressed up and went to hang out with some of her friends that were going and then came home and dressed up Ben for her date!  🙂  It was really cute!

All-in-all, everyone had a wonderful time and we spent at least an hour after everyone got home talking about how fun it was.  🙂

Tonight the high school choir program hosted a spaghetti dinner fundraiser.  Brittany and Kirstyn performed “Nearer My God to Thee” in front of a huge dinner-eating crowd.  Angela accompanied them and they sounded really good.

The microphones weren’t the best so they cut out a bit, but they kept going on and finished strong!  Ben and Zach were there as a cheering section as well.  Ben made some new friends who he played Tic-Tac-Toe with which helped him stay a little calmer and quieter.  🙂  AWSEOME job to everyone to participated.

Today the high school and feeder schools had a big parade to kick off homecoming week!  We went to support the girls and the boys were really excited to see if they could get some candy which they did.  🙂  Parade route was about a half-mile long and ended at the high school.

After the parade was over, the high school had a big festival with games, inflatable houses, and all kinds of fun.  🙂  The marching band performed for everyone again as well!  Kirstyn didn’t have a lyre for her music, so she used Ben to hold her music for her.  🙂  They sounded really good.

We had a lot of fun and met a bunch of friends there who we had some great conversation with.  🙂  Great job girls (and Ben as a music stand)!  🙂

Tonight the girls had another home football game and did a GREAT job (sorry no pictures).  🙁  I’m now an official pit dad now though!  🙂  I get to help the pit with bringing all their stuff on and off the field for their competitions.  Angela is going to help out with that too!  They need a LOT of parents, especially during the competitions where you have something like 2 minutes to get everything on and set up before they start docking you points.

Great job girls!  🙂

Today was the boy’s first day of school at the new Aspen View Academy!  We dressed them all up in their formal uniforms and they looked so cute!  🙂

All of the uniforms have to be purchased through Lands End and they ran out of the gray pants in Ben’s size, so for now, we have to send him in his blue pants on formal days (which are only a couple times a month).

They both are so excited to be going to the new school!  The only drawback now is that Ben is half-day every day, so we have to go to the school to pick up twice a day now (but it’s good for exercise and is only a 7 minute walk).  Both loved the day and we are happy that they are at the new school.  They’ll be there all the way up through middle school which is great too (AVA is a K-8 school).

Well, it’s hard to believe that August is almost over!  We’ve already been here in Castle Rock for 4 months!  Time has been going fast!

Today the boy’s Aspen View Academy (AVA) uniforms arrived and we just had to dress up the boys and get their pictures!  They are so cute in their new uniforms!  We LOVE it because now we don’t have to really think about what they’ll wear every day!  🙂

We’re still waiting for a couple more pieces to ship.  They have both formal and informal uniforms which they wear on certain days.  It will be fun to see the first day of school with all the little kids dressed up in their formal uniforms.  🙂

Tonight the girls had their first marching band performance at the first home football game.  The band is small (kind-of reminded me of Metea’s second year) when they got out on the field, but they have  a big sound.  They actually mic-up the pit for the drums and out here, they use keyboards and such as well.  It was cool!  Their show is coming along and in a couple of weeks they’ll have all three movements ready to play.

For tonight, they played and marched the first two movements.  Also, here at Castle View, the director is big on the competitions (like the director at Waubonsie was), so our Saturdays will all be filled up coming up pretty soon.  It will be fun to watch them perform a lot and we know the kids will have a blast doing it as well!  🙂  The other strange thing is that the director made Marching Band a class during the day this year (they didn’t have MB last year due to lack of participation), so everyone in Wind Ensemble is required to be in MB and any others that want to.  That makes it nice for no after school activities, but it sure creates havoc with schedules.  We hope he doesn’t do that again next year or Kirstyn will have to make some hard choices.

Great playing girls!  Keep up the great work!

Tonight the girls had their first Marching Band Parent Preview night at CVHS!  The title of their marching show is Tribal Effects and they performed some of the music from the show for us in the auditorium.  We can’t wait to hear it outside.

They had the drum line and pit on the stage, and the rest of the band lined up along the side walls and played.  It was cool to hear the music coming from all around.  One thing we did notice is how small the auditorium is.  They can’t even fit the entire student body into it.  Because of that, they have to split up concerts and such due to seating restrictions.  You could fit almost 3 of these auditoriums into Metea’s auditorium.  🙂  That’s OK though.  It’s nice and well kept and we love it here!  🙂  GREAT JOB girls!