Sylvia goes to All-State!

Sylvia spent the last 2 days in Peoria at the IMEC conference.  She earned a spot in the All-State Vocal Jazz ensemble, and was one of only 26 high school students from Illinois to do so, and only 4 from our district qualified!  We are so proud of her for this amazing accomplishment, and she enjoyed every moment of this honor!

Sylvia went to the Civic Center on Thursday morning, and the group started rehearsing at 9am.  These musicians had a great time together from the beginning!

Thursday evening, when Sylvia and some of her new friends set out for dinner at Avanti's they had a bit of an "issue" and had to take their food to-go and eat it on the floor during a quick break in rehearsal later!  Memories made!

I spent the last 2 days subbing for Ridgeview music classes, and had a ball.  Caeden joined me during lunch time, hanging out in the office.

Dr. Wilson, Annah's choir director at GU, took her to the IMEC conference as a member of ACDA and future music educator representing Greenville University Choirs, so we got to see her!  

Although her job as head of Music Education, professor of music theory, and teacher of many music courses was eliminated and she is no longer at GU, Professor Weiss still represented the university at IMEC and gathered some alumni for this photo.  She also allowed Annah to stay with her at the conference so she wouldn't have to pay for a hotel room.  They had a wonderful talk about Annah's immediate future at GU through her future as a music teacher.  (Annah is also glad to know that Prof. Weiss received both her bachelor and masters degrees at SIUe.)  Truly, this is the kind of teacher and person Annah wants to be!

Annah and her fellow GU choir student Nathaniel sang in a clinic choir and attended the ACDA choral reading session and a GU alumni reception, but Annah was most excited to watch Sylvia perform with the All-State Vocal Jazz Ensemble!

Jeremy got home from practice just in time to shower and change in about 5 minutes and drive us over to Peoria for the concert.  

The All-State Jazz Band opened the concert, and was sooooo good!!

Meanwhile, the vocal jazzers were backstage getting ready to go on!

You can just tell they were having tons of fun!

The director of the ensemble was Mr. Drew Dahan, who was formerly the head of vocal jazz and music education at Illinois Wesleyan University.  He is now teaching high school in the Chicago area, but while he was at IWU the Ridgeview vocal jazz ensemble had a couple/few opportunities to work with him, so since Sylvia was extra excited to work with him again!

Sylvia is in the back row, 4th from the right in this photo.  

She wore a dress I wore in college for some recitals and I think she rocked it!

Here is a YouTube playlist of all of the songs the group sang.  They did a fantastic job, and were such wonderful performers.  I could tell from the moment Sylvia stepped on stage and I saw her shining bright the entire performance that she was having the time of her life!  

At the end of the last song, Sylvia has a little feature.  If you listen carefully, when the whole group starts singing "Freedom is a voice," she is the only one singing the riff they had all been singing before.

She says this is her favorite thing she's ever done in her life, and she loved the whole experience SO much!

Proud sister

What a great time!!!

at Dwight

Tonight's matches were in Dwight.  

It's a ways away, so I actually rode the bus with the team.  (I won't be doing that again!) 

Caeden won his first match!

His second match was a good one, but he did not win.

Spring Musical Auditions

For months, Sylvia has been elated that the spring musical will be Guys and Dolls!  She has been dreaming of playing the part of Adelaide since she was 7 years old. Auditions were this week, and she has been praying and preparing.  Caeden has gone from saying he didn't know if he wanted to audition to he was definitely not.  Then the day before auditions, Mr. R talked with him and convinced him that it would be better to audition and try it out and see if he enjoyed it than to not audition and regret it later.  So, the night before auditions, he took 30 seconds to prepare the audition clip.  Sylvia recorded his audition prep and sent it to Annah, because she was also trying to convince him to audition.

Sylvia and 3 other girls had a callback, which made her even more nervous about getting a part at all. The girl spent most of her Christmas break choreographing the entire show, but she was also prepared to not even get a part.

The cast list was posted this evening, and Sylvia said she feels like she is floating; she is so excited to get to play Adelaide!  And Caeden is happy to get to be part of the show too!  They will have so much fun putting this one together; I'm sure!

Septic situation

For the past 12 days we have been unable to use our toilet at home.  

 We have had difficulties the last several winters, and figured the septic line was clogged, and that it had something to do with all the rain we had a week ago.  We had a new cleanout valve installed a few years ago, and when this has happened the past several winters we have had the tank pumped and either rented a sewer auger or dropped a lot of money to pay plumbers to come clear the clog in the line.  So this time, when we discovered we had a problem that was more than a toilet clog, Jeremy just bought an auger. He spent hours each night last week, trying to clear the clog with the auger and having no luck.  We had the tank pumped, but that didn't help.  Finally, we called plumbers and they brought their "big guy" auger out, ran it through the line 5 times, and couldn't find a clog. I cried while I wrote them a check for their work that still didn't solve our problem.  At that point, we had spent $1000 and a week without a toilet--with no sign of fixing the problem.  

The plumbers figured that the was a break or collapse in the old clay tile between the cleanout valve by the house and the tank in the middle of the yard, and they sent us a quote for digging up and replacing the clay tile with pvc pipe = $2500.  I sat in a chair in the living room and cried.  I don't know if it would've been as big a deal if we weren't still trying to catch up from all the expenses from the flood last May 1, but it just feels like we will never get ahead financially with this old house!  

I went outside this morning and saw that "Julie" had been here, 

marking where it was and wasn't ok to dig.

We have had good experiences with A-1 Haney plumbing through the past year, and they sent 2 guys out today.  They dug up the old, old, old clay tile and broke it into pieces.  Kurt spent all day down in that trench.  I mean, you would have to pay me at least $2500 to do a job that dealt with breaking up an old, completely clogged septic line!  

They put in the new pvc, and gave it more of a pitch going away from the house.  

We had our toilet flushing by afternoon, praise God!  It has been difficult not having a working toilet in the house (or even one in the village that is accessible).  We have made trips to Colfax multiple times each day to go at the school or the gas station.  We are very, very thankful to have this problem corrected.

Conference Duals part 1

This evening the wrestling team was at Gibson City for the first half of HOIC Conference Duals against GCMSF, Heyworth, and LeRoy.

Getting warmed up

Caeden found himself against DeSchepper from GCMSF.  They wrestled many times in junior high, and after Caeden had this awesome encounter with Kellen, we realized they had been in IKWF kids club together when Caeden was in Gibson City's club in kindergarten!  They will probably continue to see each other in matches throughout the rest of high school.  The mutual respect they have for one another is very cool to see.

And they are pretty evenly matched...

And they actually look similar, as far as build, which you don't always see in wrestling.

They also look similar in hairstyle.

It was a great match, and very close.  Kellen was the one who got his hand raised at the end.

The second round for Ridgeview was against Heyworth.  Their coach would not do matchups ahead of time, so he chose which wrestlers he was sending out once one of our guys stepped up to the table to report for his weight class.  Caeden had to wrestle Spencer, who is a senior and a state champion.  I can tell you by the feeling of impending vomiting that I had when I saw who Caeden had to wrestle, that I am incredibly proud of Caeden for walking out there on the mat and going head to head with that guy.  That takes an incredible amount of guts!  I think Spencer was surprised by how flexible Caeden was (as are most guys who wrestle him), and he was unable to pin him in the first period.  

The third round we wrestled LeRoy.

Taking a little breather...

Goofing around

Teammates, assessing the situation...

In this round, Caeden had to wrestle Gulley, who is a mother state-level wrestler.  He knew this ahead of time, and we'll just say Caeden succumbed to Gulley's strength.  Coach said he was not disappointed that Caeden lost to Spencer and Gulley and that he was proud of him going up against them.  Me too.  Our boy has learned and grown a lot this season!

The team lost all 3 duals this evening, and Coach was a bit discouraged by that.  It really is a tough conference.  We will see how the rest of the duals go on Saturday.

Soup!

It's soup season!  Man, I love to make soups!  However, Jeremy says soup is not a meal.  And Caeden is cutting weight so I have to be careful about what kind of soups I make.  Tonight I made Greek Lemon Chicken Orzo Spinach soup.  So yummy.

LeRoy tournament

The guys were at the Randy Bowman tournament at LeRoy today.  I got there for the second half of the day to watch them. 

Moments like this are what I love to see in this sport...wrestlers hanging out together and watching while the last mat finishes before the lunch break--just being friends!

I noticed Caeden and Evan hanging out like they always do.

Evan's mom, Kristina, put the picture together with one I took of the boys 6 years ago when they were playing summer league baseball together.  They really have been buddies for a long time! It is awesome to watch them grow up together.

Caeden won two matches this afternoon while I was there!

----

He placed 5th in the tournament!

And the team took 3rd overall!