Dances and band woes

Survived another week.

Except it isn't quite over.

Gracie is off at her middle school dance tonight.  She went with a gaggle of girls, most wearing sleeveless dresses.   They looked adorable, except it's cold and rainy today.  Not ideal.  I also couldn't get Gracie's foot in a cute shoe or boot for the dance, instead she's wearing black high-top Converse.

Sigh.

Matt is off at his last regular season football game.  It's an away game, so we opted not to go.  It's also cold and rainy, as mentioned above.   #ThanksButNoThanks

Of course, the marching band fun continues tomorrow.   They have their last competition of the season and Matt has to be at school at 5:30 am.   They have one of the earliest performance times, which would be a great thing, except you don't know if you make the finals until 5:30 pm. 

Yes, 12 HOUR LATER.

If they make it, they perform again some time after 7 pm and the estimated return time to school is 12:15 am.

Yes, that would be over 18 HOURS LATER.

If they don't make finals, they will be home at 9:15 pm. #Save3Hours

I volunteered for the Pit Crew thinking if they didn't make it, I could get Matt home for his Confirmation rehearsal at 6:30, but honestly, even if we left 5 minutes after awards at 5:30, I'm not sure we can make it.   #VolunteerFail

I really want the kids to make it to finals.  I hope they have their best performance yet.   In my limited understanding of the world of marching band (because this isn't what my experience was back in the early 90s), as a smaller band, we need to win our division to ensure we make it to finals.

I hope it happens. Yet, getting home before Saturday turns to Sunday would be nice.

Hosting duties gone wild . . .

What a weekend!  I'm not sure I earned the title "Hostess with the Mostest," but I feel like a contender.

Friday night was the Spring Fling dance for the middle school.  For the 6th graders, it's their first dance.  They do their combined with the 7th graders. The 8th graders have a separate dance where they also serve dinner.  The only person in our family involved with the 8th grade dance was me, since I had to do decorations for the dinner.  Matt's closest pals were not going (soccer tournaments, etc.) so Matt decided he didn't want to go either.  Then Bassam got tickets to the Predators game and that sealed the deal.  The Preds lost, but they had a great time regardless. Plus, Matt had a brand new Pekka Rinne jersey that he was excited to wear!

Gracie, on the other hand, was not going to miss it.  The 6th graders were all a twitter about the dance.  Countless conversations and texts exchanged with  pictures of dresses shared (it's "dressy casual"), decisions about hair, and figuring out who was going with who (no dates, just groups of friends).

Gracie asked to be dropped off at her friend Natalie's house where she met up with another friend, Hope. They appear to have spent the next 40 minutes taking pictures.  I had to snag a few of them off her phone for myself.  

After the dance, these three girls, along with 7 others came back to our house for dinner.   When I suggested a post-dance dinner to Gracie initially, I thought it would be 3 or 4 friends.  But this mama hates the idea of anyone being left out, so 10 it was.   My friend Mandy helped me pick them all up (her daughter Anna was in the posse) and then hung out while the girls enjoyed a taco bar and s'mores.   There was a lot of screaming, giggling, looking at pictures on phones and loud storytelling.

And 90% of it took place on my back porch. Sorry, neighbors.  

Fast forward to Saturday, where after spending part of the afternoon (and a large chunk of change) buying Matt a new trumpet, we hosted Gracie's 12th birthday party.  After changing her mind on what she wanted to do and who she wanted to invite a thousand times, we finally landed on going back to Schakolad, a local chocolate place, for her party.  She's actually had a couple parties there in the past and it never disappoints.  They have a chocolate fountain at the start (Matt & Bassam stayed for this part and then wisely escaped the craziness!).  Then they dipped their own Oreos, marshmallows and other goodies (which they later decorated), they did a chocolate tasting (darkest chocolate through milk) and learned about where it comes from, and finished by building and decorating chocolate houses in teams, which they later took apart and took pieces home.   

Safe to say, a delicious time was had by all. 

I wrapped up hosting duties tonight by having our April Girl Scout meeting at the house. Bassam and Matt were relegated up to the bonus room with the dog (where they watched the Predators trounce the Avalanche 5-0) while the girls worked on their Science of Happiness badge.  Well, at least that's what we started out doing.  Sometimes the girls really want to talk about something else (although tonight it was somewhat related) and you just have to let the conversation flow.   There were clearly a lot of tween friend issues on their minds, so we let them share, offer each other advice and finished with a fun project of making a happiness jar full of notes and compliments from each other to read when they need a pick-me-up.  

But after three straight evenings of hosting 11 and 12 year old girls, I'm officially spent!  

Dances, hoops and scoops

While Matt and I were off to his playoff basketball game tonight (more on that in a bit), Bassam and Gracie got dressed up, went out for dinner and then to the Father-Daughter dance at school.

Bassam told Gracie they could go to dinner wherever she wanted.  Her first choice Mexicali Grill?   While we LOVE Mexican food, Bassam suggested that they do something a little "fancier" (preferably where you don't come out smelling out like Mexican food!).  She finally decided they were go to Bricks, which must be fancy because they have white table clothes (albeit with white paper on top of it).

Before leaving, Mom took a slew of  pre-dance, which of course thrilled no one. Countless shots were deleted due to "fake smiles."  Thank goodness for digital cameras (or iPhones, as the case may be!). Gracie's sweet little dress had a light green layer underneath the cream that I'm not sure you can appreciate in this picture, but she was tickled that Dad had a matching green tie.

Of course, before you can get that one nice shot, you get a whole lot of this.  Notice Bassam in the background on the phone of the twirling shots.  He was on call and trying desperately to get things settled enough so he couldn't be taking calls during the dance.   What?  You don't think you'll get your message across with Taylor Swift blaring in the background?!?

And of course, there is the mandatory picture with Charlie, who looks terribly thrilled to be there.

In the end, they had a great time, capped off by ice cream afterwards.

As for Matt and me, the Yellow Jackets lost in the first round of the playoffs 36-19.  Their record during the regular season was 2-6, so it wasn't terribly surprising.   For that reason, and many others, we were glad to close the books on basketball for the year.

It only seemed right that we stop for ice cream on the way home, too.

Let's dance!

It was a long, long week.

Or at least it seemed like it.

Some of the highlights include Gracie managing to literally make herself sick over a lost paperback book,  the big build up to "the snow day that wasn't" (yep, we didn't get a single flake!), a trip to Opryland to pick up Girl Scout cookies for our troop, hosting a huge baked potato and chili luncheon at school for all the teachers with my friends Colleen and Lanesia, getting the volunteer schedule in place for Book Fair, a Brownie meeting which included a trip to our vets office where I inconveniently find out that one of my new scouts is deathly afraid of dogs and being in the midst of a big ADHD flare-up for Matthew.  

But tonight was fun . . . a much needed ending to the week.  Bassam and Gracie were off  to the Father Daughter dance at school!

Despite my not being thrilled about the dress she chose, Gracie made it her own and declared it was perfect for dancing.  She was so happy that Bassam found a purple shirt and tie in his closet so they would match!  They look so sweet!  As for the dancing, Bassam only had to make a couple appearances on the dance floor, which was probably just fine with him.  Gracie and her pals, however, danced up a storm!

 

I don't think they were alone, either.  I headed over to school at the end as people were leaving to help with clean up and I noticed that there were a lot of sweaty girls with crazy hair and no shoes, yet most of the dads still looked pretty fresh.   As I swept the floor in the gym, I found no less than 10 barrettes, hair bands and bows that got left behind, sort of like Cinderella's glass slipper.

 

Clearly, a good time was had by all!

Recital!

The long awaited recital day finally arrived.  I may be wickedly biased, but my sweet little redhead rocked this red, sparkly tutu like nobody's business!

And she danced awesomely, too!!

We were lucky enough to be in the Saturday morning (10 a.m.) show, which meant we were done before noon.   Love it!  No late night downtown and were able to have a celebratory lunch with B's parents at the Mediterranean place. 

I'm not sure if it's because I never danced as a child, but I really don't enjoy the whole dance class experience, especially the build up to recital with the extra rehearsals and pages of instructions from the teacher, not to mention my personal challenges getting Gracie's hair up in a bun.  But when you see your child on stage dancing with a huge smile on her face, it makes it all worth it.