It's been a while
Kate called Robert on his birthday.
Kate: "Happy birthday! You're 21! You can drink now!"
Robert: "No, Kate, I am not buying you beer."
We've been too busy! Kids have been too busy!
Kate drove herself home this past weekend. It was her first time driving all by herself from Reno! Fortunately (?) Josh was sick, so I was too busy worrying about him to be obsessively worrying about Kate driving All By Herself! and then suddenly she was walking into the house (sneaking in through the garage since Robert was just driving the minivan back in at the same time.
Last week Josh had PCYO practice on Wednesday from 4:30-6:30, followed by the Music for Hope concert at the high school at 7. On Thursday his band went to the Delta Music Festival. He was not feeling great, and ended up feeling quite ill at the concert. He struggled through the performance and clinic and crashed on the bus. He was out sick from school on Friday and also missed a Friday night practice for PCYO. On Saturday night he had his Jazz band performance at the band's crab feed fundraiser. On Sunday night he had the PCYO performance. He had his call time at 4 pm, and the concert was from 7-8:30. He also has school sometimes. :)
Since Kate came home, we went to see the Lego Batman movie as a family. She called dibs on us not seeing it without her so we waited. That was a really cool movie. Best Batman movie I've seen in a long time.
Kate finally got home on a weekend because she didn't have (many) things. She's had pep band for basketball games on a lot of Saturdays. We found out that we could watch the games on ESPN3 and fast forward and slow down when they show the end zones. Then we can look for her. In her last game we saw her cheering and waving her trombone around and laughing with her friends as the camera panned past her. She looks like she's having a great time.
UNR is great for her. She had a wonderful time in marching band last fall, and she sneaked into the Wind Ensemble in the fall. She was feeling overwhelmed at the beginning of the school year with marching band and new stuff. She bailed on the required audition, but they didn't get enough trombones (they only had one) so the director showed up at marching practice to invite her to join anyway. He said that he'd heard her play when he had visited her high school in the spring and her director pointed her out as "she's going to UNR and planning to join the marching band in the fall" and that he would count that as her audition so she could be in Wind Ensemble now. Kate and I had spent a lot of time rearranging her schedule over the summer to leave the slot open for Wind Ensemble, and when she didn't even try out I was quite grumpy that we'd put in all that effort "for nothing". But I guess it was good that we did. :) For the second semester, she actually lined up and auditioned, and although she was horribly nervous and thought she did terribly, she was accepted into Wind Ensemble and not Symphonic band (she did tell them that she could not do Symphonic band because she had a schedule conflict with one of her required classes, so she's extra happy that she got into the band that she could do).
Kate also managed to get her own room for the spring semester. She was sharing a 2-bedroom "suite" (2 bedrooms connected to a private hallway that contains 4 closets, 4 dressers and a sink). The two girls living in the other bedroom moved out, and Kate's roommate got permission to move into their bedroom, so now the two remaining girls each have their own room, and just share the hall. She took the microwave and refrigerator with her to her bedroom, so we took Robert's former mini fridge and microwave up when we saw Kate's concert earlier this year. We'd taken Nick, the black Fit, up to her before that. It was stormy the week she returned to school, and we weren't quite comfortable with her driving on icy, wet roads going over the mountains by herself for the first time, so we took the car up to her a few weeks later. We insisted that she take it for a car wash to get the road salt off of it. Since she doesn't like doing new things, she had to take a friend along for support. Her friend thought that Kate freaking out driving through the car wash was the funniest thing and she snappedchatted Kate. Yeah, Kate is a spoiled kid. "I've never done this kind of car wash before! We always go to the one that they drive your car through for you!"
Josh is having a lot of fun in band. Marching band did pretty well. I think we won all of the competitions in our division except for WBA prelims (we were second, which is still pretty good). WBA finals was rained in and they had a spectacularly eventful performance (prop trees on wheels started blowing around on the field, the director yelled for students to leave the trees instead of moving them around as choreographed and everybody except Josh and his buddy got the memo so they were the only ones moving their tree, Gagan lost his mouthpiece when it flew off when he snapped up his horn, then found it again later in the show and mooned a judge when he bent over to pick it up, Emily's gauntlet fell off and she had to carry it for the rest of the show in her hand, Lauren's shako slid down over her eyes and she had a hard time seeing where she was going, we couldn't use electronics so the synth players and electric bass player had to just stand there and the pit wasn't miked so they were hard to hear, and in the last segment our head drum major, Brendan, showing great initiative, got them off the field as fast as he could ("I'm going to take this piece up a notch.") and conducted the already fast part even faster. They followed him amazingly well. Now that's leadership. :)
Halloween was fun. Josh's section dressed up as characters from Peter Pan. Josh reused Kate's kangaroo costume, which wasn't exactly a lost boy, but it fit in.
Josh had a girlfriend, and then she broke up with him, but it took me a rather long time to find out any of this because he is a pretty typical noncommunicative teenage boy.
We took Josh out right on his 15.5 year birthday to get his permit. He is currently working on driving practice. In his Copious Spare Time. Although driving to and from music lessons and PCYO and other music stuff adds up.
Josh tried out and got into Cap Section Honor Band and All Northern Honor Band. He improved from 6/6 to 2/6 in Cap Section, and from 8/9 to 6/9 in All Northern. He didn't get into All State this year, so that's still on the list to do. He also prepared an audition CD to get into the high school jazz band this year. While cleaning out his backpack I found out that he never turned it in. :P But he was accepted into the jazz band anyway, probably because they only had 3 other trombones sign up. I think that's a theme for my kids.
Robert is taking a break from school for now and he is home.
Kate: "Happy birthday! You're 21! You can drink now!"
Robert: "No, Kate, I am not buying you beer."
We've been too busy! Kids have been too busy!
Kate drove herself home this past weekend. It was her first time driving all by herself from Reno! Fortunately (?) Josh was sick, so I was too busy worrying about him to be obsessively worrying about Kate driving All By Herself! and then suddenly she was walking into the house (sneaking in through the garage since Robert was just driving the minivan back in at the same time.
Last week Josh had PCYO practice on Wednesday from 4:30-6:30, followed by the Music for Hope concert at the high school at 7. On Thursday his band went to the Delta Music Festival. He was not feeling great, and ended up feeling quite ill at the concert. He struggled through the performance and clinic and crashed on the bus. He was out sick from school on Friday and also missed a Friday night practice for PCYO. On Saturday night he had his Jazz band performance at the band's crab feed fundraiser. On Sunday night he had the PCYO performance. He had his call time at 4 pm, and the concert was from 7-8:30. He also has school sometimes. :)
Since Kate came home, we went to see the Lego Batman movie as a family. She called dibs on us not seeing it without her so we waited. That was a really cool movie. Best Batman movie I've seen in a long time.
Kate finally got home on a weekend because she didn't have (many) things. She's had pep band for basketball games on a lot of Saturdays. We found out that we could watch the games on ESPN3 and fast forward and slow down when they show the end zones. Then we can look for her. In her last game we saw her cheering and waving her trombone around and laughing with her friends as the camera panned past her. She looks like she's having a great time.
UNR is great for her. She had a wonderful time in marching band last fall, and she sneaked into the Wind Ensemble in the fall. She was feeling overwhelmed at the beginning of the school year with marching band and new stuff. She bailed on the required audition, but they didn't get enough trombones (they only had one) so the director showed up at marching practice to invite her to join anyway. He said that he'd heard her play when he had visited her high school in the spring and her director pointed her out as "she's going to UNR and planning to join the marching band in the fall" and that he would count that as her audition so she could be in Wind Ensemble now. Kate and I had spent a lot of time rearranging her schedule over the summer to leave the slot open for Wind Ensemble, and when she didn't even try out I was quite grumpy that we'd put in all that effort "for nothing". But I guess it was good that we did. :) For the second semester, she actually lined up and auditioned, and although she was horribly nervous and thought she did terribly, she was accepted into Wind Ensemble and not Symphonic band (she did tell them that she could not do Symphonic band because she had a schedule conflict with one of her required classes, so she's extra happy that she got into the band that she could do).
Kate also managed to get her own room for the spring semester. She was sharing a 2-bedroom "suite" (2 bedrooms connected to a private hallway that contains 4 closets, 4 dressers and a sink). The two girls living in the other bedroom moved out, and Kate's roommate got permission to move into their bedroom, so now the two remaining girls each have their own room, and just share the hall. She took the microwave and refrigerator with her to her bedroom, so we took Robert's former mini fridge and microwave up when we saw Kate's concert earlier this year. We'd taken Nick, the black Fit, up to her before that. It was stormy the week she returned to school, and we weren't quite comfortable with her driving on icy, wet roads going over the mountains by herself for the first time, so we took the car up to her a few weeks later. We insisted that she take it for a car wash to get the road salt off of it. Since she doesn't like doing new things, she had to take a friend along for support. Her friend thought that Kate freaking out driving through the car wash was the funniest thing and she snappedchatted Kate. Yeah, Kate is a spoiled kid. "I've never done this kind of car wash before! We always go to the one that they drive your car through for you!"
Josh is having a lot of fun in band. Marching band did pretty well. I think we won all of the competitions in our division except for WBA prelims (we were second, which is still pretty good). WBA finals was rained in and they had a spectacularly eventful performance (prop trees on wheels started blowing around on the field, the director yelled for students to leave the trees instead of moving them around as choreographed and everybody except Josh and his buddy got the memo so they were the only ones moving their tree, Gagan lost his mouthpiece when it flew off when he snapped up his horn, then found it again later in the show and mooned a judge when he bent over to pick it up, Emily's gauntlet fell off and she had to carry it for the rest of the show in her hand, Lauren's shako slid down over her eyes and she had a hard time seeing where she was going, we couldn't use electronics so the synth players and electric bass player had to just stand there and the pit wasn't miked so they were hard to hear, and in the last segment our head drum major, Brendan, showing great initiative, got them off the field as fast as he could ("I'm going to take this piece up a notch.") and conducted the already fast part even faster. They followed him amazingly well. Now that's leadership. :)
Halloween was fun. Josh's section dressed up as characters from Peter Pan. Josh reused Kate's kangaroo costume, which wasn't exactly a lost boy, but it fit in.
Josh had a girlfriend, and then she broke up with him, but it took me a rather long time to find out any of this because he is a pretty typical noncommunicative teenage boy.
We took Josh out right on his 15.5 year birthday to get his permit. He is currently working on driving practice. In his Copious Spare Time. Although driving to and from music lessons and PCYO and other music stuff adds up.
Josh tried out and got into Cap Section Honor Band and All Northern Honor Band. He improved from 6/6 to 2/6 in Cap Section, and from 8/9 to 6/9 in All Northern. He didn't get into All State this year, so that's still on the list to do. He also prepared an audition CD to get into the high school jazz band this year. While cleaning out his backpack I found out that he never turned it in. :P But he was accepted into the jazz band anyway, probably because they only had 3 other trombones sign up. I think that's a theme for my kids.
Robert is taking a break from school for now and he is home.