Nostalgia lives here

A friend of mine has started to put up some old recordings of choir and band concerts from when we were in high school.

Did that bring back some memories or what? Let's see - in no particular order:

• Yelling "Dondero Loves Durand" every year...
• Ray bringing us truffles from his upscale restaurant before a competition
• Jill and I locking our keys in our room (twice) in Holland
• The bus breaking down on the way back from Holland freshmen year
• Going through initiation, which is super gross, then having to get cleaned up and come back to play a b-ball game that night. My dad hosing me down outside in the yard cuz I couldn't possibly go in the house looking (and smelling!) like that.
• Having Ray teach us dance moves to "Vogue" by Madonna and "Round and Round" by Dead or Alive.
• Making Night Show Sr. Year
• Listening to Pat and Julie jam to Rob Base all the freakin time
• Freezing our tookus off every weekend in the bleachers!

So. Tonight my kids have a middle school band concert. And unbeknownst to me, the high school showed up as well to give everyone a taste of what the high school band program was like. My daughter will be in high school next year (i know, i know) and so it was a nice mix of the bands. They did a couple concert pieces (that TOTALLY rocked) and then full marching band get-up inside the auditorium. Very FUN!

And it was fun to feel the excitement from the kids. They are excited to be a part of the Marching Experience when they get to high school. It's so hard to describe the type of energy and the type of connections I made during Marching Band. Everyone had their "thing" in high school. For some it was sports, for some it was drama, for some it was choir. For many of us, it was a blend of all of these - which I'm sure made every experience that much richer. I just know that I need to express successfully to my kids how many OPPORTUNITIES there are in high school. And they need to GET INVOLVED.

One thing the h.s. band director did that I thought was cool. She was talking to the audience (including the middle school band students) about how many great things the band did, and how involved and intelligent the band kids were. Then she turned to her band and said 'How many of you are on the honor roll?' - A whole host of hands shot up.

'How many of you play a sport in school?' - Again, a ton of hands went up.

'How many of you are captain of that sport?' - At least 10 hands went up.

'How many of you are involved in volunteer or church organizations?' - Tons of hands.

She got her point across but she drove it home by talking to the kids in a way that they understood. She was very adorably 'with it' and both my kids thought she seemed very fun. I was also secretly (or not so) happy to see a female in charge of the h.s. program as i know that's not the norm and kudos to all the female band directors out there!

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I pulled out my h.s. scrapbook and I really need to get going on scanning some of these pics. From my new years eve party senior year. From Initiation during pre-week my jr. year (yes, i think it was spaghetti dinner!) From Key West trip Spring Break. (Would YOUUUUUU rather???? EAT A BEETLE!) From Senior Prom.... I gotta get this stuff up so you can all oooh and ahhhh over our big hair and our young faces =)