YAHOO CADETS!

Well, the big contest is over and my Cadets came home with some "hardware" that they should be VERY proud of!

They put on their best performance yet and were named 4th place overall in their class and 13th overall. Now, while this may not sound so hot, the rest is!

My color guard was named CLASS CHAMPION as well as OVERALL CHAMPION out of 23 bands. They beat the grand champion bands and so forth. What an amazing moment.

My entire group was awarded the CLASS CHAMPION for General Effect, which basically means that the music and visual package together served it's purpose to entertain and work effectively in communicating the ideas we had in mind for the students to perform.

They were awarded two beautiful GLASS trophies for these accomplishments. Last year, we finished low in our class and only got a small plaque basically hat said thanks for coming.

In the Visual performance catagory (how well they marched, body moves, etc, and how the show design worked) they were named 2nd place in their class. Another GREAT accomplishment.

You may ask how we could place so low with wininng 2 of 6 areas, well...notice the one area of no awards? MUSIC performance. That area also counts for the most when everything is added together. While they sounded good and made lots of progress on the music....it is VERY difficult music and takes so much polishing. It's a young group and tough to get the polish all there. Not to mention it is my weakest area of teaching as well. BUT, we worked very hard the last few weeks on getting this area better and it was clearly evident that great strides were made.

The kids felt great after their performance and knew they'd done the best they could have. What a bonus it was to bring home the General Effect award because I sure wasn't expecting that!

Twas a beautiful day and nothing but good things all day.

Today, I slept in a bit then we took the girls to church school then did some running around. We found a costume for Libbi for Halloween....we were at Old Navy buying Abbi her dance company warm-up suit and saw that they had costumes on sale for half off....so, our Libbi is going to be a chicken. I personally think it looks more like an egg with feet hatched out already, but nonetheless it is adorable! They didn't have any costumes in Abbi's size, but she wants to be a cowgirl. Grandma and Grandpa gave her snazzy REAL pink cowboy boots for her birthday and she wants to be a cowgirl. We'll search for a ncie cowboy shirt and get ehr set up.

We are about to leave to take the girls to the pumpkin patch farm. We've gone there each year we lived here, it is fun!

SO...revelling in the glory of GLASS trophies and proud of my kids.