Happy 16th Birthday, Nora!
My only involvement in her birthday fun was
at lunchtime when a little party was thrown for her for those of us who weren’t
going to her party after school. That
was a fun, if short, blast of fun; though I’m also sure that getting her driver’s
license was the most-important event of her day. From what I saw at school and then at the
marching band practice, Nora’s had a good day; and I’m glad that she has
enjoyed her sweet sixteenth.
I’ve also been too busy today to do much
more than that when it comes to even thinking much about anything else that’s
going on around town – and it is fairly busy as the first big holiday weekend
of the summer tourist season gets nearer every day. We’re now down to just two practices left to
go before the long weekend for both our first marching band debut and the
holiday weekend Sunday service that the teen praise team will be leading; so our
practices tonight were fairly intense.
We had a busy concert band practice too;
though that was partly because we were getting ready for the marching band
practice too – and not just with the music.
The work for the fundraising and other jobs – like uniforms – needs to
get done too, and since most of the marching band leaders are in the concert
band; we can get some of that done during that practice – especially now that
we don’t have anything else to get ready for with the concert band through the
end of the school year. Topping the to-do
list tonight were updates for the fruit and vegetable boxes sales; plans for
holiday weekend fundraising; and the uniforms.
The first is keeping up with our goals, but we reminded everyone tonight
that the deliveries this month are on the holiday weekend; and that it’s a
great time for extra sales both to our hometown family and friends looking for
extra food to feed incoming guests and to make sales to those visiting guests
to take home with them when they head home again.
Our holiday weekend fundraiser is going to
be a snacks and drinks booth at the park.
There isn’t much fundraising allowed on the Memorial Day weekend –
especially when the picnic in the park on Monday is free to everyone; but we
are being allowed to do this, and if it works out okay for everyone without
intruding on the holiday; the booth may be allowed to be used by other charity
groups in the future. Finally, the first
batch of uniforms is in; so we finished getting the individual orders ready to
hand out tonight. We want to have at
least one shirt in the hands of every band member by the end of practice next
week; but we still have quite a few orders that need to be paid for first.
By the way – we do have a fund for students
that can’t afford the expense of the uniforms – including offering vouchers for
the pants and shoes that we’re responsible for picking up on our own if we don’t
already have black pants and dark-colored shoes. That’s being funded through the family
business; but only a couple of teachers know that.
Moving along, our marching band practice
went pretty well, and we’re where I expected we’d be with two practices left to
go. The music is really coming together
now, and we have fewer mess-ups with the marching; so I think that we’ll be
ready to go for the parade – if not quite ready to play the Super Bowl
half-time show! Now that the work is
starting to show some results, we’re all having more fun too; and I can also
report that the band members from Maple Valley are feeling a lot better about
fitting in with everyone from our school too.
That practice went a bit long, so we got a
late start to our praise team practice.
We still had a full practice to do to get ready for the Memorial Day
weekend service, though, so we were late getting finished at the church
too. Cascade that along, and you get why
it’s so late as I’m writing this report.
Michael came home with me; we did our homework; Mom did a Magi lesson
with us when she had the chance for that; and then Michael and I took care of
getting Ethan and Ehlana tucked in for the night. Taking time after that for a minor make-out
session was both a great and bad idea, but doing that was a lot of fun; so I’m
okay with the extra time I’ve needed to stay awake due to that diversion before
Michael went home and I got to work on my studies and family business job.
Adding in those long hours of computing in ‘normal’
time; and it’s been a very long day for me.
It’s also time to go into nap mode now, and I don’t really have anything
interesting to report from my work and studies anyway; so, until next time...
...May the Magi Force be with you!
