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!