Band Trip

This weekend, after all the Thanksgiving hoopla, most people woke up early Friday morning to go shopping (or they were smart and stayed in bed because they were still full from all that food). I, on the other hand, got up early to ride on a charter bus with a bunch of teenagers for 10 hours. Such fun!!!!

Actually, it wasn't that bad. I was able to be a chaperone for the HHS band as we traveled to Las Vegas for state semi-finals in football. Vegas, baby!! We had to share the bus with the cheerleaders, and normally that is something I hate to do. The girls were really good, however. Yay! No extra annoying whining! Once we got to Vegas and checked into our hotels (we didn't have the same hotel as the cheerleaders), we split the kids up into groups of 10 with two chaperones each, then we hit the town.

My group was actually the drumline. There is only one girl on the drumline, so we were a little outnumbered. The other chaperone was Andy, my color guard dad and the official "best band mom ever". We took the kids to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner (it was across the street from the hotel we were staying at). The best part was we happened to be seated in a section where all the signed drumheads and symbols were. Andy and I both loved it, and the one white kid on our drumline is totally into hard rock, so he was literally drooling as we pointed out some of the paraphanalia. Everyone had really good meals, and it was such a good experience for these kids. Most of these kids will never go someplace like this. If they do go on trips with their families, they don't get to go far away, and eating out means McDonalds. So it was a lot of fun.

After dinner, we walked to the strip (it was about a half hour walk! Man, we sure all worked off our turkey dinners!!). We had a game plan as a group: go to New York New York and ride the roller coaster, see the fountain show at the Bellagio, go to MnM World, and spend the majority of the night at Game Works. What we ended up doing was walking to NYNY, waiting while the kids decided that it was too long of a wait, then going to Game Works. Now, I am NOT an arcade person. I am NOT a video game person. That would be my husband. So, I was bored out of my mind. But the kids had a good time. I went upstairs and visited MnM World by myself and got souveniers for Aiden and Dallin.Then I walked around the Coca-Cola place for a few minutes, but they were closing, so I headed back down to Game Works to wait for the kids. By the time we had them gathered up and stopped someplace because they were dying of thirst, we didn't have time to see the water show. So, back to the hotel we went.

Saturday was the football game. Most of the kids assumed that since we were in Vegas, it would be really hot, so they didn't bring their jackets or sweatshirts off the bus. Silly kids! I wasn't freezing or anything, but it was cool, and there was a LOT of wind. The wind made it feel colder than it was.

The game was really good and really exciting. HHS ended up winning it in sudden-death overtime 17-14. The state finals are this Saturday, here in town at Mackay Stadium. Yay for no more long bus drives!!!!!! After the game it was back on the bus for the very long ride home. One of the movies we watched was "Honey", about this dancer who teaches hip hop to kids and wants to dance in videos. It was actually a pretty cute movie. A very obvious plotline, not the greatest actors, but it was still fun to watch. It had David Moscow in it, and I don't think I've seen him in anything since "Newsies"! Still not a very good actor, but certainly not the worst (the worst actors ever are #1 Keanu Reeves, #2 Kevin Costner).

I was sick all day on Friday, but my fever broke during the night so I felt great on Saturday. However, my head was starting to hurt, and by Sunday afternoon it was a full-on migraine. That didn't go away until about 3:30 p.m. Monday afternoon.

It was a pretty good trip overall. We have some pretty great kids in this band, and I'm proud of them. I missed my kids, but they had fun with Dad. Mostly I was sad because Dallin got up on his hands and knees all by himself on Friday, so I missed it!! When Ches told me about it on the phone that night, I started to cry a little. He said, "Don't cry. It's not that big og a deal and he'll do it again."

"Yeah, but I'm the MOTHER!" I replied. "I'm supposed to be there!" I think I'm still sad because Aiden took his first steps at the sitter's house when I was teaching part time. That was when I knew that as much as I loved teaching, I loved being at home with my kids more and I couldn't be at work.