Trills and Thrills

First, let me breathe.... (huge sigh of relief).... ok.

This weekend, the band director and I took our band and choir to Atlanta for our big spring trip. I have to admit, I was nervous. But, after the first few hours, I knew that this was going to be a great trip. Allow me to recap:

We met at the school at 7:30 a.m. After a meeting with all students and chaperones, we loaded the buses and were on our way. Two hours later, we stopped at a mall to eat lunch. Our choices were: Chick-fil-a, or three Asian restaurants. Needless to say, the line for Chick-fil-a was a mile long. After we ate, we loaded the buses and left for the World of Coke. If you haven't been, it's worth a visit. They sure do a great job of making you want to drink a coke. They show a short animated film, then a self-guided tour through the museum begins. The tour ends with the tasting room, where you can drink all the coke you want and try the other 63 flavors of coke products from around the world. After we pumped the kids full of caffeine, we went to check into the hotel. This was the part I was perhaps the most nervous about. It takes a while to check 227 kids into a hotel! The hotel gave us a stack of room keys and a list of names and room numbers. We had to sort throught them, and figure out which room key packets went with which pre-determined room of kids. As it turned out, I was missing close to fifteen room key packets. Eventually, we got it all figured out and kids got checked into rooms. From there, we went to ESPN Zone. Here, kids got to play a million arcade games and eat an all you can eat buffett. After that it was back to the hotel and lights out, tomorrow is an early morning. Wake up call was at 5:00 a.m. (4:00 a.m. CST) We got all the kids fed and loaded onto the buses.
The whole reason we went on this trip was to perform in a music festival. Sure, we did a ton of other really fun things, but the performance (in my opinion) was the most important experience for the kids. We were performing at the Trills and Thrills music festival being held at Marietta Middle School. The band got "Superior" ratings, which is incredible. The choir peformed at 8:50 a.m. Luckily, we had plenty of time to warm up and were ready to go at our performance time. We sang our first piece well, with only one major mistake (which I take full responsibility for.) After a brief pause, we sang our second piece and, in my opinion, really sang it well. I was so proud of these kids. It all came together at that performance and I really felt like we were a team. We got "excellent" ratings, which I'm perfectly happy with and I think we deserved.
We spent the rest of the day in Six Flags riding roller coasters, eating junk food, screaming our brains out, sweating, and generally loving life. By the time we got home last night, I think the kids were sufficiently worn out and ready to be home. It was such a great weekend and I'm so proud of my kids not only for their performance, but for their overall behavior this weekend. I love my job.