Checking in :)

Ok, so the last few weeks have been utterly trying and extremely busy! Choir, Guard, Ballroom, and life...

So in the last few competitions for guard we have had some ups and downs. From 4th place to 9th place, and then back to 4th it was sure a roller coaster ride but we made it. And now we are pushing for a placement at the next competition. If we are able to place we will be invited to attend the championship at Roy High School on April 3rd. I would say "here's to hoping" but then that would suggest that we are leaving it up to chance and not work. So here's to working! We have an unusual situation with the guard here...we have 16 on our team, and most of them have had no formal weapon training at all...and yet they come, and the diligently work and perform with their hearts and souls. They are learning how to become invested in the message they are portraying for those who watch us. The heart is so important in everything we do, I pray we who have claimed to have found it....will never lose it....it will set us free.....

We also had the national competition for ballroom last week and needless to say, as it said on my facebook update..."nationals becomes a very long week in a very short time". But even so, long as it was, we sure had a great run as a JV team here at Provo high. We qualified for Division 1 latin which was a blow away for all of us here on the team including myself. Not that I didn't think we could, but it was a medley in its first year, and one of MY medleys none the less. I know my kids are all capable of achieving excellence, but I wonder about MY personal work...and if it is capable of division one....to be rated among the best of choreography and teams in the nation. But we did it and I congratulate my kids for it! Well done! Also, we placed first it the division 2 Standard championships! National championship title, sure is a great thing to have under the belt! Again, great job to my ever amazing kids!

Choir has been a running adventure! Wow have I learned...the intricacies of a young musicians mind...how they think and how they operate. "Was I like this as a young man?" I often wondered as I was teaching choir.... I had the kids write an essay about them so I could read them. Nothing specific, just "Why?". It gave me an avenue to travel that was in direct correlation with the mind set of the kids in choir. It took me three weeks to finally learn how to meld in with the kids in choir...and after that? ....Magic started to happen. In the end, Chamber went to region festival, and against what seemed all odds and other incredibly talented choirs in the region we did our best. We went out on stage, looked them in the eye with a gaze that seemed to say, "WE ARE PROVO"

......we made state......

I knew they would, and they needed to know they could....and they did. To my choir students, God bless you for realizing where your potential sat dormant, and even more so for tapping in to that reserve. I know you will do amazing at state. I will be there....now....and at state...listening. God Bless you.

I believe Life is in tune with the unusually unexpected...we laugh, we love, we hope, we try, we hurt, need, fear, and then we cry.....and through all these things of the unexpected and even unusual we find a sense of similarity between all of us...we desire those things that make us who we are. And even though we may end up in a slight sense of devastation, we yet desire then for what we become when we experience those things. And like I asked my choir kids....."Why?" And to the answer so simple and beautiful I must with my whole soul...agree.

Because it will set us free....for we are truly alive and free, when in the hands of someone we call dear...

Dreacis