Homecoming

Homecoming week has come and gone.

I don't go to high school.  I don't teach high school.  And I'm exhausted.

I guess it's enough to live near a high schooler and have a higher schooler, right?

The festivities actually began a two weeks ago. There were four "flower parties" (large numbers of kids making tissue paper flowers for the float) hosted at various classmates houses.  As a member of the "TEAM 2022" board, my role in those four flower parties was coordinating snacks.   My friend Colleen and I have cornered the "hospitality" portion of things, since we are ready responsible for hospitality for both the high school and middle school PTO's.   

The base for the float was built a week ago last Monday.  I personally had nothing to offer in that endeavor, except my dad's handy skills, which I did offer.  Thanks, Dad.

Fast forward to this past Tuesday.  It was float built week!  The float build location was the neighbor who lives directly behind me.  Float build goes from 3:30-9 pm, Tuesday through Thursday.  Kids typically come in either first or second shift, with other kids just popping in and out when they could, including mine, who managed to make it over despite his marching band schedule and scads of homework.

Thankfully, I didn't have a lot of responsibility with actual float building.  It really was student-led. So all the parents had to do "student herding."  But what I was really responsible for was serving dinner to all those kids for three nights.  The problem is, of course, that you don't know how many kids will be there.   They tell us to plan for 80-100, so the menu had to be easy.  Hot dogs (cooked in the crock pot--amazingly simple!) on Tuesday, tacos on Wednesday and pizza on Thursday. Thankfully, I could do my portion of the food prep at my house and just walk it over.

And just to keep it interesting, did I mention IT RAINED Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  It misted, it rained and it POURED, y'all.  Actually, it actually started the weekend.  Days and days of rain.  We should have built an ark instead of a float.  The air was full of moisture, the ground was a mushy, muddy mess.  All of the tissue paper on the float was decidedly damp and the adhesive was having a hard time doing it's job.

Wore my bright red rain boots more in the last week that I've worn them all year.

At 9 pm on Thursday night we were finished.  Whoo hoo!

And on Friday morning, the rain stopped and for the first time in a week, we saw the sun. 

The freshman class got third place on their float.   A respectable finish for a group of kids building their first float. 

Matt opted not to march with the band and instead road on the golf team float.  I use the word float loosely.  There was a kiddie pool on the back of the trailer (theme for the parade was "Surfs Up!") a bunch of balloons, Hawaiian shirts and leis.   Everyone who saw him on the route said he was having a ball and last night he declared it, "the best day of high school this year."

Meanwhile, did I mention there was a second float to build?

All the feeder schools are invited to participate in the high school parade the last couple years.  But unlike the class float, the middle school float one is made entirely by parents.  If you think herding freshman was hard, imagine herding middle schoolers.  Think HERDING CATS.  My friend Colleen and I headed up the efforts.   We bought some props from a party catalog, she made some palm trees and we put the whole thing together in my driveway in a couple hours and it came out great.   My dad also played a role in this one, loaning us a slew of clamps and building some nifty (and very last minute) columns to hold up the Surf Shack.  Thanks, Dad.

Of course, homecoming is more than a parade. There's also the football game, which was last night.  To make room for the homecoming court festivities, the band did their halftime performance at pregame.  I was on the pit-crew, responsible for moving percussion and the set from the school to the stadium, on and off the field, and then back to the truck where it's all stored.   I didn't see much of the game, but we won 41-3, so that's pretty good.

This mama crashed immediately upon returning home.  The crash wasn't terribly long-lived as Matt had to be back at school at 5:45 am to leave for Clarksville for a marching band competition.  Then I'm back at school at 8:30 to tear down the Freshman float. 

And THEN homecoming is really over.