Class of 84 Flashback: Homecoming Week

This past week was Homecoming so I thought I'd supplement my very few current pictures with pictures from back in my day.  A little compare-contrast of Homecoming traditions past and present, Texas vs. Not Texas.

 Exhibit #1: Homecoming Mums.  Very Texas. These are relatively understated.  Round these parts?  Never heard of them!

Exhibit #2: Pep Rallies.  Every Friday, for 10 weeks during football season, we had a shortened class schedule so we could all go to a pep rally at the end of the day.  Because when it comes down to learning vs. football, everyone knows the primary purpose of the Texas high school is football.   I think where we live now, there might be a pep rally.  One.  Maybe.  I'm really not sure.

Exhibit #3: Theme Weeks and Class Competitions.  We had elaborate Homecoming themes, and every class sponsored an event to raise money for their prom.  (My class was always awesome).  My junior year the theme was music and our class got punk rock.  We held a dance. Each class also decorated their halls.  This is my junior year hall.  Our senior year hall was really fantastic, but I don't have a picture of that.

This is what passed for "punk" in suburban Dallas in 1982.

Exhibit 4: Parades.  Here my kid's school has my old school beat.  On Wednesday on Homecoming Week, they stop 5 p.m. rush hour traffic on a major U.S. highway which is already enough of a mess to hold a parade.  Made sense when this was a little farm town.  Not so much anymore with 30,000 people and roads that can't take the traffic as it is.  After 7 years of deliberately missing it, I decided to go for this last year.  It was . . .  cute.

They changed them around and I was on the wrong side of the street to get a good shot of the youngest.

I had to take a picture of the Mu Alpha Theta float since I rode on that one in the one parade my school had.

My school started a parade my senior year.  Here is my view from the Mu Alpha Theta / National Honor Society float.  Hey, those people were the cool kids.

I had to add this picture because BOTH my boys have been the AP Stats Correlation King.  My oldest was supposed to ride in this parade as Correlation King, but the band director at the time would not let him out of marching with the band.  The youngest was Correlation King in the spring, so no parade but he wore the crown in school all day.

It turned out to be too cold for good pictures at the football game, and my children are refuseniks when it comes to the dance.  As usual, the Band Boosters did the coat check at the dance, which is always entertaining, but I sat that one out this year.  Hope you enjoyed my Class of 84 flashback!

College Report Saturday

Part of the purpose for writing this blog was to document the college process.  Since I started the blog with the process already in progress, I haven't found an entry point to write about it yet.  So let's just jump in.

You would think, having done this before, that this time it would be a piece of cake.  We definitely learned things from the first time around, but it is still an overwhelming process.  Even with all the experience & knowledge that the husband, who teaches at a specialized high school where ALL the kids go to college, most of them selective colleges, and myself from teaching at the community college and involved in a statewide transfer panel, bring to the game, we still find it confusing and overwhelming at times.

One lesson learned from the first child - VISIT the college!  Every school he visited, he got into.  Every school he applied to with no contact, wait-listed. All otherwise equal schools.  (Except the safety school where if you met the criteria, you were in).  With electronic applications, kids can apply to way too many schools, so colleges need some way to sort the otherwise qualified applicants to determine who is likely to enroll.  Visiting shows interest, not just playing a numbers game.

 So the past two summers we have visited a total of 13 schools. From the start, the youngest was pretty sure about two things.  He liked small.  He hates heat.  (So that dashed my dream of sending him to the school in my native state of Texas, the one I should have gone to, but chickened out of).

 Turns out 13 may have been too many, as ALL of us were burned out on visits by the end.  We ended up missing a couple that were promising but none of us had it in us to go out again.  The youngest certainly, wasn't having it.

From the visits, he has narrowed it to 8 schools.  All of them are in our region of the country.  One in our home state, and 5 other states represented.  All liberal arts colleges, with the smallest about 1200 students and the largest about 3200.  All Division 3; three with exceptionally good music programs.  (The 3rd thing he is sure about, he wants to continue playing).

 Part of my paranoia of privacy means that I will NOT be mentioning their names until the big reveal when he makes his final selection, but have included some random pictures of some to keep it interesting.

Empty Nest Preview Weekend: Fun & Worry

This past weekend, we got a taste of life with the empty nest.  The youngest went with the Marching Band to Very Large Amusement Park two states over.  They left after school Friday and returned before 5 (a.m.) Sunday morning.  Now, this is not the first time we have had this preview.  Oldest & youngest took this same trip when they were senior/freshman.  The youngest has also had two Spring Break Band Trips during the past two years, which did not coincide with the oldest's Spring Break.  But since this is the last band trip, and since we actually had stuff planned, instead of just working, this was a particularly nice weekend.

Friday afternoon was lovely weather to help with bus loading.  The smell of diesel buses always takes me back to my church choir tour days in high school.  Perhaps I will write about that formative experience sometime as they were the number one motivation for me to push my kids hard into music.  That evening the husband & I, along with my mom, went to a very nice restaurant with gift cards that had been sitting in a drawer for over a year.  Foodies and vegetarians may shudder, but to me, nothing says fancy dinner better than prime rib, a potato, and onion bread!  Paired with a Blood Orange Cosmo beforehand and Coconut Banana Cream Pie!  Yum.

Saturday morning I skipped yoga class and we took a long walk at a large nature preserve.  This was how we spent many weekends pre- and early marriage, before kids.  Later we went to a beer tasting event in our town, within walking distance of our house.  Ever had a Saison?  Or a smoked porter with vanilla bean?  Yes, please.  And finally relaxing in front of the fire pit.  Early to bed, because like I said, up at 4 to go pick up the retuning musician.

Nice as it was, the weekend also provided some of the anxiety from a distance that one experiences when the (grown) children are away.  I was not worried about the one on the band trip; we are old hands at that.  However, I heard from one of the kids going on the trip that my oldest, who goes to college about an hour and a half from the Very Large Amusement Park, was planning on taking a road trip, as he still has close ties to certain kids in the band.  He doesn't have a car at college, so we weren't sure if or how he would get there.  I decided that he is 20 years old, and it would be best to just let it happen if it was going to happen (just hoping he wouldn't make any of the kids miss call time or something).  It turns out that he took Amtrak to the town the park is near, then WALKED to the park.  Then back.  Now it was only a five mile walk, but after the fact I Google mapped it.  I'm glad I didn't know.  I am very sensitive to location privacy and my kids' privacy with this blog, so I won't say where this park is, but lets just say, very hazardous roadways!  Far worse than I would have imagined, and I am thankful no one ran him over or tried to pick him up.  Or that the cops didn't haul him in.  I have gently explained to him that it is possible to call a cab!

I find with the college student that anxiety is out of sight, out of mind.  I don't worry about him when he is away, unless I know (and I usually don't) that something is happening.  I guess I have to brace myself for two next year!

Senior Night & the High Note King

Last Friday was Senior Night at the football game, where the football players, cheerleaders, poms, trainers, and yes, marching band seniors and their parents get to parade around the track for a brief moment of glory.  (Very brief compared to the interminable waiting beforehand).

Here is the brief moment of glory.

And here is a relaxed moment with friends during the interminable waiting.

The JV game went late, so by the time the Senior Night ceremonies and 9/11 commemorations were done, and a shortened pre-game show on the track, the varsity game didn't get started until about 8:15 p.m.  Despite how exhausted the senior was, occasional glances through the binoculars showed he was having a lot of fun.  The junior high bands played in the stands with them, and the band was loud.

Believe it or not, we have learned to pick his trumpet out of the crowd at times.  I have designated him the High Note King, because in a lineup of good senior trumpet players, the high notes have become his niche.  He's the one hitting that killer note -"land of the free" in the Star-Spangled Banner.   He also gets a high note in at the end of "Thriller" during the Marching Show.  He is not one for solos - he is not part of the trio of trumpets featured during the Elvis medley.  He does, however, have a few solo bars during "Bohemian Rhapsody", which made its debut that night.  As is typical, he did not share with us beforehand that this was coming.  But we had a great view of him on the field and as soon as we heard the notes, we knew it was him.  Tremendous parental pride - this is the kid who really struggled with his instrument in 6th grade and he has had periods of challenge with it from time to time since.  But this is also the kid who works and works and doesn't give up.  Both me and his dad were just beaming Friday night!

Band Boosters: Emptying the Nest, Losing a Community Connection

Tonight is the first Band Boosters meeting of the year.  I am starting my 5th year as an officer - my second year as President.   And though I have been telling myself, just one more year of monthly Monday commitments, I am wondering if it is going to be a big shock when next year, it is just gone out of my life.  For that is the thing, when your last one goes, it is not just your child that is missing from the house, but it is all the activities, schedules, organizations, and connections to community that goes with him.  For our family, our children's involvement in the high school band, and my involvement with Band Boosters, is really the only connection to the town we live in.  Since neither myself nor my husband are from here, and neither of us have family here, the schools are our link to this town.  When that connection is severed next year, there is really nothing holding us here (Except pathetic real estate values and virtually unsellable homes - it was great living in one of the fastest growing counties in the country.  Until it wasn't.)  We do have nice neighbors, but the majority of them are still firmly in the "kids in school" stage of life.  Our jobs take our focus away from here, though the community college where I am on faculty includes this town and draws many students from our town.  Working through this process of leaving this part of the community and figuring out what to replace it with is part of the purpose of this blog.  I know there are plenty of empty next blogs out there, but those are for another day.

For now, I have a meeting to run and new band families to welcome!

Friday Night Lights

Marching band season started a few weeks ago (and I will post my pictures of that some time I promise) but this past weekend was the football home-opener so the band had their "official" field show debut.  Bands don't travel to away games where we are - if any of my Texas friends are reading this, I would like to know if Texas bands still travel -  so this was in fact the second week of football.  They won last week.

Whatever, as always, lead-up time is crazy around here, so this is what passes for asking the youngest to pose for a picture.  It is actually not too bad, but what you don't see is that I grabbed the half-eaten hot dog out of his hand in order to take the picture.  Then he & the hot dog were out the door.  Hopefully the hot dog is not still in the car!

The band only marched two songs, stood for the third, and substituted the fight song for the fourth.  He is disappointed with their progress.  We left in the 3rd quarter.  And the team lost, but to a Top 20 team in the state.

I thought I took more pictures at the game, but I seem to have deleted them, so here are a couple to hold us over until next home game in two weeks.  Which should be Senior Night. Record: 1-1

Band walking in for pre-game show on the track.

Color guard leading the way.  Coin toss going on in the background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Block Out

Fourth day of school today, and the wear & tear is already starting to show.  You see, our high school had been on a 4x4 block schedule for the past 10 years or so.  That means the school day was 4x 90-minute class periods.  The kids took only 4 classes at a time, and since ours always had 1 class of band/gym alternating days, they never had more than 3 academic classes at a time.  Sometimes only two classes were really "serious".   And because the classes were so long each day, we found with our kids, at least, that homework was a rare occurrence.

But this year, the district switched back to a traditional schedule of 7 - 8 classes, 40 minutes a day, all year long.  The educator in me thinks this is far superior to block (we see one result at the college where I teach in the form of poor math placement scores due to extended time off from math).  But, I think it is really unfortunate that the youngest & his classmates had to make the transition with only one year left to go.  These kids are now adjusting to a heavier class load, actual homework because there is not time in class, the same full schedule of extra-curriculars, and at the same time, starting the college process, which is the equivalent of a class in and of itself, at least during fall semester..

Check out "early bird gym" -  zero hour, which means 6:20 a.m.  This is the child who prefers to sleep til noon then stay up til the wee hours of the a.m.  Full schedule then band after school.  He is exhausted, but won't admit it yet.

He chose this schedule, btw, after three years of not going for a challenge.  We are proud of him for not slacking senior year, but warned him that he had no idea what was coming with the end of block.  I think he is starting to figure it out.

P.S. That 2013-2014 course request list is new this year.  I was a little sad to see it since there won't be any 2013-2014 course requests!  At least not at this school.