Retreat

I just had a great scrapbook retreat weekend. Friendship with fellow scrapbookers, some awesome food, no chores, fresh air at camp and I come home rejuvenated and ready to go again! I know not a lot of people understand our weekends away. They think "scrapbookers"... they must just be crafting. But scrapbooking is so much more than that to me. It is a way of documenting life's moments... preserving a piece of our life to remember. I know that life is much more than a few memories, but this is one thing that I can do to share with my family what they mean to me. Here are some of my creations from the weekend:

Making Time...

This is one of those things that I think most parents struggle with their high schoolers about.... making time for the things that are important. They have school, homework, extracurricular activities, recreational and family activities, and they want to be involved in it all! So how do you teach them to decide what is IMPORTANT?

Of course, what I think is important and what they think is important may not necessarily be the same. School for example... is surely at the top of both our lists but school "extra-curricular" activities are very time consuming but very important to the kids. Doesn't that count as making school a priority? You don't want to let everyone else down because you need to do more research for your paper. It also seems that when things get busy at school it is all the family time that seems to get cut first! I know that as they grow up we will see less of them but that doesn't mean I won't miss that time spent together. I am learning to relish those times more.

How do you teach your kids that it is okay to give something up? That you don't need to participate in everything. I think this is going to be one of our biggest challenges this year.

Adversity

Adversity...one defintion I found was a state of misfortune or calamity. Adversity is not something that we look forward to but it is something that we all face, and in overcoming it, it can make us stronger.

This past weekend was the boys final marching band competition of the season and Flu had hit the school:
8 band members were out sick
2 soloists & 1 drum major with a speaking part were sick
& 1 was injured and on crutches

No fear... they worked it out. Two students were given solos the day before the competition (Jacob was one of them) and our injured member stepped up to do the speaking part on his crutches... we can do this! The band director decided to go even with our many holes in the line not to mention sounding quite different with that many musicians missing. Then we got to Missouri... People kept mentioning that the field was muddy, but the kids had no idea just how muddy until they stepped onto the field. The mud was just slick! I saw at least 5 near misses as far as falling goes but everyone managed to stay upright. The kids were a little dissapointed in how they did but I think they did awesome in light of all of the adversity.

What a better way to learn that life does not always deal you roses and sometimes you just need to step up and do you best.

SNOW!

Oct. 10th and it is snowing! You know I love snow and winter activities that come along with it like skiing and Christmas, BUT OCTOBER! I sit here looking out the window at the snow accumulating, thinking about the Cross Country meet and Marching Band competition that we have on the schedule for today, and I can enjoy the view knowing it won't last long.

What Makes Me Smile...

Sometimes SMILES come from very unexpected places. This morning, I had several students in the library finishing up World Civ poster projects. I glanced over to see one student pasteing the journaling boxes on his poster with a Big Grin on his face. I thought, how nice that he is enjoying his project (most high school students loath poster projects). Upon closer examination, I noticed that he was pasteing his boxes on by writing funny saying with his glue stick! It made me smile even bigger but for a whole new reason. He made "enjoying the simple things" take on a whole new meaning.

What a good way to start off a Friday!

With Pride!

Marching band is in full swing! The band has a little motto for this year "With Pride!" and it came to mean so much more this past weekend. The boys had 2 performances again - a Friday night football game and a Sat. Competition. It was a pretty rough week as far as practices went. Both boys were frustrated that they were working hard to get better while other band members didn't seem to care how they did. Practice before the Friday game went exceptionally BAD! Even the band director couldn't believe their attitudes - practice ran long and the drumline didn't even make it out in time for the National Athem. Things were not looking good...we were on pins an needles before the performance. It's hard to watch your kids go out do a bad job. But teens always amaze me at how fast their attitudes change - good and bad. They actually pulled off a pretty good show and were all in good moods after the game.

Saturdays perfomance was a competition. In Iowa, all bands compete at a level that is determined by their school size which puts Xavier at 4A (just barely). That puts them up against bands that are usually 200-250 members in this area. So, when you put our 65 member band on the field, we look pretty puny. There is just no way that we can compete with the sound of a band that has 150 more musicians. The kids pulled off their BEST performance yet! It wasn't perfect but they really tried hard.

No matter how hard you try to be proud of what you have done it is hard for the kids to be excited about coming in last place. Granted, they definitely did 100 times better than their first performance, but it is hard to always come in last. How do you motivate your kids to do their best when they know they are probably already out of the competition. I am PROUD at how they did and I hope they are proud about their performance but this is a tough one. How do you keep students motivated on pride alone. It is so easy for them to only see trophies & placements. Our last competition will be in Missouri. The good thing about this is that they will competing with other marching bands their size. If they can keep that in mind.... I am anxious to see where they will be in 3 more weeks. "WITH PRIDE!"

Driving Myself to Work

I know this may sound like an odd topic… but for the last several years my schedule has always revolved around the kids school schedules – who had to be where & when. In Aug. we finally broke down and bought a 3rd car (something Bob said that he would never do) but it was his idea. We found a small used car for the boys to use - only to be rear ended, on the 2nd day of school about 2 weeks later, so we were back down to 2 cars again. We are finally back to 3 cars and, TODAY for the first time I didn’t have to go into work early! I know this may seem trivial but for most of my career at Xavier, I have worked around driving kids to school. Today, they went in early and I didn’t have to go in until 8:30 am! The FREEDOM felt amazing and the extra hour really makes a difference. It was amazing how much I got done this morning before work. I drove to work with a smile on my face and it is still there.

Procrastination...

I am a master at procrastination... especially when it comes to ironing! It is obviously not one of my favorite things to do. I usually let it pile up until I want a shirt buried deep within. So, last night was the night.. time to get caught up. I ran out of hangers and distilled water before I ran out of ironing but I did discover an unknown benefit. After announcing that I was going downstairs to do ironing, Jacob, my sixteen year old, came up and gave me a hug! Well that was a surprise! My food for thought for the day... do you suppose I do ironing more often in hopes of more hugs or only once in a while in hopes of getting another unsolicited hug?

One Day at a Time

Well, here I go... exploring a little more in the great expanse of Technology. I thought I'd give blogging a little try. Welcome to the Wallraff family blog. I thought this might be a fun way to share with family & friends.

We just had a great Labor Day weekend. Our weekend started off with the first marching band performance (football game) of the season. Even without a director the kids did a good job. One song down, 2 to go (they only performed the first song this weekend). First competition is this upcoming weekend... should be a challenging week. Nick was never more excited or animated about marching band then after his first performance in the drumline as a Freshman.

We also took a trip to Adventureland with the Shobes and Greg & Angie's family. The weather was great, the crowds were even better (non-existent for the most part) and a great time was had by all. I haven't laughed this much in a long time. My 5 year twin nephews were just riot. The things that come out of 5 year old's mouths...

Why is their GPS's name Samantha? That's a gross name!
Riding the rollercoaster was dead silence (scared to death the first time)... but as soon as they got off they were screaming about how great it was!
How many mini donuts do you want? "A LOT"!

All in all, a great time was had by all, thanks for visiting our blog!