A New Chapter

I ended the last school year with a post on Turning Pages, primarily about Grace's end of middle school, end of competitive gymnastics, and looking forward to high school.

Well, high school is upon us soon and things are already ramping up. We had to make sure to end our week in Avalon on the Friday of the week, because freshman orientation day for pre-band camp was on Saturday August 11. Grace had been warned by neighborhood friends that she would hate the first few days of band camp but after that she would start to like it. So she went for freshman day. She came home. We asked "how was it?' Shockingly enough, the answer was "It was great!!" Go figure.

Freshman clarinet at band camp

The rest of band camp week went fine. We went to see the parents' view of the show on Friday at the end of the week. It was...rough around the edges...but had promise. Most importantly, Grace was having fun.

Section day, orange clarinets (at least some of them)

There would be two football games with performances before the school year even starts (8/24 and 8/31 - of which we won both). The performances would start with the first parts, and would add on more and more as the season went on.

Happy clarinet

Grace was apprehensive about high school, but had a bunch of advantages going in. She had new friends from band camp, and some 10th and 11th graders that knew her from middle school. Gina and Savannah from the neighborhood (class of 2017 with Julia) had also been clarinets, so Grace had an indirect connection to some of the juniors and seniors in the clarinet section who were still around, and who knew Grace's older friends. She also knew a lot of upper classmen that were involved in the drama club and the musicals (because of Julia's and Mom's involvement over the years, and herself having spent a lot of hours at the high school after her middle school day while Julia and Mom did their thing). Having a lot of friendly faces in the school, even if only casual acquaintances, would prove to be very helpful.

She would also sign up for the drama club and participate in the fall musical, which was High School Musical. She would be an ensemble member (a cheerleader), and because of her gymnastics background, would be the one to do some tumbling routines on stage. Hopefully she will like it. If she does she does. If she doesn't, well, so be it. If nothing else, she would get to spend some after school time with Mom, who has accepted the responsibility of a 2-year (minimum) stint as a sub-contracted school district employee in charge of costumes for the plays.

So that's where we will end August. On the threshold of lots of new things. Exciting. A little scary. New. Fun.