States and Nationals

 November 4th was the State Competition for the marching band. That's the one that's held at Ford Field every year and our school is in charge of hosting it. My friend is in charge of the volunteers and I have been her assistant. I was there for 17 hours that day. Luckily, it was the day before the time change, so it wasn't actually 11:30 pm when I returned home, if I went along with the time for the next day. But yes, I did wake up at 3:30 am and arrived at Ford Field at 4:50 am so we could host the 53 schools from the state. Somehow the day went by fast and I enjoyed my interactions with the people I came in contact with. I heard a lot of band music,  but I didn't see a lot of them due to the fact that I was very much needed this year since a couple of the registration volunteers didn't show and that was where I was stationed. I also had to train each new volunteer who came in. I did get food vouchers,  got to see our school perform, and saw Jason, Austin,  and Erik when they came in. I also didn't have to pay to get in and fulfilled another requirement for volunteer work with the band.

PCMB got 4th in the State, so 1 place better than last year.  I really enjoyed our show this year. It's called Neo Chroma.

We had decided to have the boys attend States rather than Nationals, which was our original plan, because there was supposed to be a Young Men's campout the weekend of Nationals that we thought they should definitely go to, plus Austin had the opportunity to run at the last, optional, xc meet. Well, it turned out they postponed the campout and we were informed after the boys had already gone to States for $30/ ticket and they were't that interested in it. We really didn't want to pay for them for the prelims on Friday and then Semis on Saturday for Nationals, plus Finals if we made that, especially if they weren't going to enjoy it. So, Erik went to a friend's house Friday night and Austin to another friend's house whose 2 boys would also be attending the meet on Saturday. They both highly enjoyed their Friday night fun with friends and a whole day with them on Saturday. Austin even got another PR in xc! (I'll post about that soon).

So, Jason, my mom, and I got to go on an adult road trip 4 hours away to Indianpolis.

We stayed where I stayed last year and did all the walking that I did last year, except this year it was a while lot warmer and even sunny! 

We watched the prelims Friday and the awards that night. PCMB made it to semis the next morning. We watched them, and a whole bunch of other schools. We had lunch with an old family friend. Her mom and my mom were best friends after college and we grew up thinking her kids were our cousins. The daughter my age, Kim, lives in Indianapolis. It was fun to reconnect before going back for more of the competition. 

Saturday evening, we discovered in the awards that we didn't make it to finals, but were in the top 25. We're so proud of all they did and couldn't decided ourselves who should continue on to finals. There are so many talented marching bands! We were happy we could return home that night without feeling like we were going to miss their finals performance, which was going to start at 8pm, with 11:30 pm awards, and cost another $45/ticket. We had walked 9 miles total that day and were tired and ready to be back with Austin and Erik. There's not a lot of interaction with the marching band/color guard kiddos during competitions, we only saw Kade for 5 minutes in person, so we left knowing he'd have fun watching the finals with friends and return home the next day on the bus. 

Way to go PCMB and Kade!

At the mall before dinner. The only time we could visit with the kids. 

And now I can finally post a video of the performance!!