The Final Trip to Finals

This weekend was our typical marching band St. George weekend. As always, Matthew traveled with the band while Kevin, Malia and I made our way southward separately. The Red Rocks state finals were held on Friday night so that was our activity for the evening. The marching band has not done super well this season, for reasons that Matthew will gladly rant about, so he wasn’t overly optimistic about their chances of doing well in the state finals. As expected, they did not walk away with any awards. The Bands of America competition was yesterday and although they didn’t win any awards there either, Matthew felt like it was a good performance, and a good way to end the season.

As for our non-band related activities, Kevin, Malia and I visited a dinosaur tracks museum yesterday morning. About twenty years ago, a local businessman was doing some work on a property he owned and uncovered a layer of fossilized dinosaur footprints. He was smart enough and conscientious enough to know that his discovery had value to the scientific community, so he worked with a variety of different organizations that helped gather enough funds to build a museum over the site. It is still actively being excavated, which is cool, and it was far more interesting than it may sound. Due to the many different footprints, tail marks, and even butt prints left by dinosaurs, they have been able to learn quite a bit about dinosaur behavior. I found it fascinating!

We also stopped by the Red Cliffs Temple. We didn’t have time to go in, but we took some time to wander the grounds and take some pictures. It was a pleasant way to while away an hour before hitting the road.

This was our last marching band related trip to St. George. In some ways, it is kind of sad that we are done with that part of our lives. It has been nice to get away for a few days and we have discovered and seen some fun things trying to fill the time between marching band events. But maybe that just means that we will explore some new places in future. Because these short getaways have been fun.

Last Night on the Field

Tonight was the marching band friends and family night, the final performance of this year’s show before the kids head to St. George for the state finals. It was also senior night, a chance to highlight the kids who are marching for the last time before they graduate. Each senior, accompanied by their parents, was celebrated with a brief paragraph highlighting them and given a fun ribbon lei in the school colors. Kevin and I were both in attendance and were so pleased to be able to support Matthew. 

Once all the seniors were presented and cheered, one parent of every student was invited to shadow their student for one movement of the show. Since Kevin and I had already been down to the field, we sent Malia. She might not be his parent, but the two of them have been the only kids living at home for years now and despite their occasional clashes, they are actually pretty good friends. She is fully aware that Matthew will be leaving home in less than a year, so I felt like giving her a chance to be a part of his world for a bit would be good. And it was.

We were all bundled up because it was soooooo cold! Honestly, even with thermals, boots, sweater, coat, gloves, and hood, I was still cold! Once we headed back to the stands, I was able to shelter with Malia in our stadium blanket and that helped a bit, but seriously, I was frigid. That is why the state finals are held down south. It is usually warmer there. Not always, but usually. Hopefully this year will be on the warm side because I might still need time to thaw out by the time we get there later this week. 😂

Matthew had the realization that tonight was the very last time he will march on his home field. It was one of those reality moments, I think. For all of us. 

Do You Want Fries with that Band?

Daniel was not on hand for our gingerbread adventures this year. While we were playing with icing and sprinkles, he was in Boise with the USU football team and the marching band for the Potato Bowl. While Idaho is nowhere near as exciting as L.A. or even Vegas, it does mean that he will be able to make it home tomorrow and be here in time for Christmas Eve dinner with my folks. Like Matthew, he finds great joy in his music and has loved being able to play in the marching band again this season. He is one of the oldest in the marching band at this point and is very aware of that fact, but he is trying to enjoy his music as long as he can. Once college is over, music ensembles change dramatically and are often few and far between for many of us. I see his joy and hope that he will remember all these times with fondness when he is ready to move on to whatever is next. Even if what he remembers is trying to play in the freezing cold and lots of potato jokes!

The Band Goes Marching

Since August, Matthew has been eating, sleeping, and breathing marching band. It is a time demanding fall extracurricular activity and if you want an idea of how rigorous it is physically, the kids who participate get P.E. credit. Yes, they play music because it is band, but this is not the relaxing kind of band. This is the kind of band where you need all your breath support to play but you also need the strength and stamina to artfully march backwards across 40 yards of the football field in only 8 counts of music. As such, physical conditioning is a part of their regular rehearsals. Matthew has become a lean, mean marching machine with some pretty well-defined muscles. 

In addition to improving his physical abilities, Matthew has also made some impressive improvements musically. He is the first trumpet which means that all the super high notes are his. He has worked really hard and practiced for hours and hours to be able to hit them cleanly and make them ring. And he has accomplished his goal. Although he is the only one playing those notes, they ring out over the top of the rest of the band! I know I’m a proud mama and maybe no one else hears it because they aren’t listening specifically to those notes, but they are clear and strong, and they really do resonate. It’s fantastic!

To sum things up, I think this year’s marching band has been good for Matthew. Maybe they didn’t place as well as they would have liked (I know there were some performance anxiety issues as they would have fabulous run-throughs in rehearsal and then kind of choke in competitions), but I think Matthew has learned a lot this season, improved a lot, gained some much-needed confidence, and had a lot of fun. To me, that makes for a successful season. 

A Quick Trip to the Desert

The state marching band finals were this past weekend, so once again, Kevin, Malia and I made the trek to St. George to support Matthew. The finals didn’t coincide with fall break like they did last year, and we didn’t want Malia to miss more school than she needs to (And she really, really doesn’t want to miss more school than she needs to. Now that she had gotten her middle school “sea legs,” she is back to loving school.), so we did just a quick overnight trip. We left on Friday morning so we could arrive with enough time for an early dinner and the opportunity to get a decent seat in the stadium. We watched the competition in the evening and then headed to the hotel for the night. 

Yesterday morning, we traveled just outside of town to visit Silver Reef, a local ghost town that was once the location of one of only two silver mines found in sandstone in the world. Once the silver rush was over, the town completely died and even most of the buildings were dismantled and moved to other locations due to the scarcity of timber in the area. But some local citizens have put a lot of time and money into restoring and preserving what’s there and it was a pretty neat stop. As with many old west style communities, there were some colorful stories about fights, murders, and general disturbances of the peace. 

There were also tarantulas. And I mean that literally. I’ve never seen a tarantula in the wild before, and to be honest, I was equal parts fascinated and icked out. (If you need some background on my spider issues, check out last month’s post on this exact subject.) Malia thought it was completely disgusting, but neither her disgust nor my crawling skin prevented us from staring at the thing for a good long while. It’s that whole need to know where it is mentality. It was actually a pretty small one, but still. Tarantula. Big old hairy spider. It was a fairly cool morning, and it was just sunning itself on the sidewalk, but as it started to wander away and fell off the edge of the sidewalk, both Malia and I jumped. High. Yes, I know I’m admitting I’m a scaredy cat, but again, big hairy spider! Malia is our wildlife photographer though, so she took a picture of the spider anyway. And she took pictures of the lizards that we saw running all over the place. Those didn’t give us the heebie jeebies though, so she spent more time photographing them!

After lunch we headed back to the stadium to watch Matthew’s band perform in the Bands of America Competition, after which we headed home. We caught a spectacular sunset on the way and with our fairly late-night arrival back home, we were grateful for late church for once.

Matthew had a great weekend as well. He has made some really good friends in the band and the highlight of his band travel was the fun they had. They took third place in their division in the state finals, had some crazy rubber duck gags going all weekend, and generally enjoyed their trip.

We've got one more year of high school marching band for Matthew. I suspect next fall will see us in St. George one more time.

His Band Tan is Well Under Way

Matthew just finished up his two-week band camp for the upcoming marching band season. He is excited about this year’s show and feels like they have gotten a great start over the past several weeks. Hopefully he can maintain the same level of enthusiasm as the season progresses. There are a lot of rehearsal hours ahead of him!

Here Comes the Parade

This morning Matthew made a guest appearance on T.V., not his first, but a landmark day all the same. Matthew hit the news years ago when his 3rd grade class was spotlighted during Harry Potter Week. This morning the marching band from the high school had the opportunity to march in the Days of 47 Parade, the biggest parade of the year around here. He had a good time and we had fun watching him from here where it is air conditioned! 

“Here’s the Season in 13 Pictures”

Throughout the marching band season, Matthew has been creating collages of pictures to use as his phone lock screen. Most of them have been selfies he has taken with his band buddies sprinkled with a few of him taken by other people. He has created quite a few collages, rotating them as new pictures are taken at each competition. Today he shared a new one, one that includes his favorite pictures of himself taken throughout the season. Many of them have been featured in other posts, but these are the ones he has handpicked as his most iconic photos. He has had a great time and has a plethora of pictures to help him remember his first marching season!

A Weekend Away

This weekend Kevin, Malia and I were in St. George. The state high school marching band finals were this weekend and we drove down to watch the competition and to act as Matthew’s food related emergency backup plan. This is the first time he has done any kind of an overnight trip without us. When he was twelve, he had planned to go on the yearly summer scout camp out, but as the dates got closer and closer, he got more and more uneasy, and he and Kevin decided together that going was not the right thing. The year after that was when Covid hit, and all such activities were cancelled for so long that he really hasn’t had many opportunities. But band is important to him, very important, so making this trip work was a necessity for him. In fact, he felt like this three-night jaunt would be a trial run for their longer and further away full band tour in the spring.

We have been talking and planning for months and while Matthew had a food plan and wanted very much to handle everything on his own, he did ask if we could be his emergency back-up just in case something went sideways. Well, nothing went wrong. He did great and had great support from the band teacher and the boosters. In fact, he felt so confident after several successfully managed days that the rest of us came home yesterday instead of staying until this morning like the band did.

While Matthew was busy living it up with his band cronies, Kev, Malia and I were having a mini vacation. We did attend the competition on Friday night though. The finals are held in St. George each year so that the weather is more temperate, but there has been an unusual cold snap and it was cold, so very cold outside. I think Malia and I were nearly frozen to the bleachers by the time the performance was over. At least we were smart enough to bring our coats and Kev brought the stadium blankets that he uses when BYU football games are played in inclement weather, so we were reasonably well prepared for the frigid temperatures.

The three of us spent the morning on Friday visiting some church historical sites in the St. George area. We visited the St. George temple and spent some time with the missionaries serving in the visitor’s center and got a peek at the current state of the temple renovations. We also took a tour of the St. George Tabernacle. I’m always terribly impressed with the quality of the pioneer workmanship that went into creating these amazing buildings, and this tabernacle was no exception. It was absolutely beautiful, and we heard some pretty neat stories about the history of St. George and the tabernacle itself. 

We visited Brigham Young’s winter home as well and learned a bit more about this particular prophet. I think my favorite story was about the building of the St. George Temple. Brigham Young knew the temple should be topped by a dome. The original plans had a steeple, but since the tabernacle had a spire, he wanted the temple to be different and knew a dome was just the thing. Plans were adjusted and there was a dome built. But when Brigham Young saw it, he declared that it was too short. The dome needed to be taller, and he wanted them to fix it. Not long after that, Brigham Young passed away, so those working on the temple just left the short dome in place. But to their chagrin, within a year of Brigham Young’s death, lightning struck the temple and the dome was destroyed by the resulting fire. The rest of the temple was unaffected. At that point, the decision was made to make the dome tower taller, just as Brigham had told them it needed to be.

Yesterday morning we went on a hunt for some petroglyphs. I found a site that was not far away, just over the border into Arizona, so we decided to head out and see the sites. We followed the directions we found on the internet, and it only took us a few minutes to realize that the website had neglected to provide the information that you really needed a truck or 4-wheel drive off roading vehicle to get to the site. We quickly decided to abort that mission and set to work finding some petroglyphs elsewhere. We ended up driving to a giant rock covered in petroglyphs that was located in the middle of the neighborhood. Obviously, the rock was there long before the houses, but the developers had designed the neighborhood around the existing rock and made the area into a small park. The fully paved roads in a calm, residential area were a much better match for our vehicle! And we still got to see some cool petroglyphs. 

After the petroglyphs, we took a tour of the Jacob Hamblin home, another church historic site, but it was underwhelming after our time in the tabernacle and Brigham Young’s home the previous day. Many of the stories told were the same and our interest was waning at that point. We did see a roadrunner while we were in the parking lot though. None of us had ever seen a roadrunner in person, so that was neat!

As I said earlier, Matthew felt comfortable enough in his ability to feed himself safely that after conferring with him, we decided to head home mid-day yesterday rather than stay until this morning. We arrived home last night, slept in our own beds, and awaited Matthew’s return. He got home midday today and despite the disappointment over the judging, he had a great time. He feels like he can handle the upcoming tour and that with some advanced planning and continued support from the band director and the parent chaperones, he can make it work. I think he can too. It ended up being a very successful weekend. Not only did we all have fun, but Matthew has gained some real confidence in this ability to feed himself safely on a school sponsored trip.

Competition Day-BYU

Last night Matthew’s marching band competition was held at BYU. He has been an avid BYU fan for years, so the opportunity to play and march on the Cougar’s homefield was super exciting for him. Unfortunately, it was not a great performance, and he came home disappointed in how they did. However, that did not dim his enthusiasm for the fact that he had played in the stadium!

Tuesdays are young men activity nights and since this particular competition happened to fall on a Tuesday evening, Matthew suggested to his leaders that they attend the competition for this week’s activity. They decided to do so, and I was so glad! It was a sign to Matthew that what he does matters and that they are supportive of him. Over the past many years, the young men activities have been heavily focused on sports (mostly basketball) and outdoor recreation like hiking and camping. None of those things are particularly interesting to Matthew and he (and Nathan before him) has long bemoaned the fact that there has been no variety in their activities. We have some new leaders right now though, and I think it has been good. And as I said before, I’m so glad they decided to drive down to see Matthew march. Even though this particular performance was not great, Matthew was so pleased by their attendance.

A Couple of Firsts

As I’ve mentioned in the past, this is Matthew’s first year of marching band. He has been in rehearsals regularly since July. It is hard work, but he’s been loving it. Last night was Matthew’s first ever marching band competition and he was equal parts excited and nervous. That’s pretty normal state to be in for a performer of any kind, so I wasn’t surprised. 

This particular competition was held close to home, so the rest of us drove over to watch his performance. I’m going to be completely honest and admit that I don’t get the whole competitive marching band conceptual show thing. For me, fun music and marching into recognizable formations or making letters or something is all I know about what good marching band performances should be. So I struggle to say what they do well other than the music, which I can at least say was played well even if I don’t actually understand what the music has to do with the theme of the show, and the crispness/unity of their overall movements. But with my limited marching band expertise, I felt like they did a good job.

Apparently, I was not the only one who felt like they did well, because they took first place in their division. They also took captions (secondary awards for each of the areas that are part of the show-music, props, color guard, etc.) for both music and color guard. Matthew, and I assume all the kids, were totally hyped that they did so well. They have spent countless hours rehearsing and all that time and effort has led the band to start the season strong!

It’s Autumn Time

For most people, fall is football season. Around here, it is marching band season. Ok, so maybe it’s marching band season for Daniel, football season for Kevin, and a lively combination of the two for Matthew. But whichever comes first in each person’s mind, this year we have two sons marching. Daniel is glad to be back, and Matthew is super excited about his first marching season!

Here Comes the Parade

After three years of waiting, Matthew has finally made it high school and marching band! He had three days of band camp this week in preparation for yesterday’s parade. When Daniel did summer band they marched in multiple parades, but Matthew, who is in a different school, just did the one in our own little town. He had a great time and worked some different muscles. This little peek at marching has him very excited to get started in fall marching band which will start at the end of July.

Last night was also the annual fireworks show and family gathering with Kevin’s clan. I skipped out due to a week’s worth of headaches and late nights, but everyone else had fun. Malia was, as always, pleased as punch to spend some time with her girl cousins. Daniel and Matthew used the remaining daylight to play a little frisbee. Even Nathan was able to join in the festivities by calling to talk to Kev’s mom for a few minutes. With the current missionary contact rules, they are allowed to call for big family events as well as the major holidays and weekly calls, so it was all perfectly legal. I think everyone had a great time and while I would have liked to be there, I got some much need sleep.

Big Time Marching Band

 Daniel has had one of those once in a lifetime experiences. The USU football team went to a bowl game and the marching band got to go. Since I wasn’t there, Daniel is my guest blogger to share his experience.

A little bit of context: The USU football team had the best season in school history this year. First season since the 80s with double digit wins, and first Mountain West Championship win in school history. It was our win in the conference championship that landed us into the inaugural Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl. Because the football team made into the bowl, the marching band was invited as well to come and play for them! 

Our trip to the LA Bowl began on Thursday with getting up at 4:00 in the morning to make sure we arrived on time to our frigid 5:00 am call time in the Laub Athletics center. It was below freezing in Logan at the time. We loaded up tour busses, which had stickers placed on the side for the band and were on the road by 5:40. Thursday was spent in the bus traveling to L.A. Twelve hours later and a large amount of stir-crazy band kids later, we arrived at our hotel by LAX. The bus ride was largely uneventful, except for my first experience with LA traffic. Let me tell you, that made me really grateful that we don’t have any place with traffic that bad in the places I go! Once we arrived at the hotel, we were all pretty much done for the day. A few of the saxophonists in the band got together and played a few JackBox Games, but we were all tired from driving all day and so we went to bed.

Friday morning, we went and had breakfast. The university gave us a stipend of about $100 for food, so I ate at no expense. After that we went to do the only rehearsal we had in LA. It was a rather uncanny rehearsal, as we were on a community college field that felt like a high school field and it was 70 degrees. I had to keep reminding myself that it was nearly Christmas. For this game, we had learned a whole new pre-game show to account for the people that couldn’t come with us and an all-new halftime show. We had set the shows the night before we left for LA, so they were all still very new. That being said, we were able to get them on the field really quickly! We had our rehearsal, and then we went and had lunch. After lunch, it was a little bit of down time before we went to the pep rally the night before the game proper. The pep rally consisted of us playing the fight song and the Scotsman a few times along with a few of our other stand tunes in a battle of the bands format with the OSU band. The place they had us do the pep rally just outside SoFi Stadium was not suited for bands, and so the acoustics made hearing the OSU band hard. But I believe that they sounded good, even if we couldn’t hear it! We went back to the hotel and turned in for the night.

Saturday was the day that most of the event occurred. We woke up, and then had breakfast. Afterward, we packed up the hotel and got dressed in our marching band uniforms, which we would spend the rest of the day in. We were out of the hotel by Noon, and we were on our way back to SoFi. We started by walking into the stadium and finding our seats, and all I can say is that it is the nicest stadium I have ever been in. We had to walk down a ramp that led to our seats. We got situated and discovered that the field was 100 feet below ground level. That made it much cooler in the stadium than in the parking lot. We were served a lunch provided by the Aggie Alumni Association in the Toyota Patio area. We hung out there a bit, then we got all lined up, and then played our halftime show, fight song, and the Scotsman for them. After we performed there, we were shepherded down to the field for our pre-game show. In the tunnel on the way down, we ran into the OSU band, and we ran past giving them high fives and fist bumps and wishing them good luck. We got down on into the tunnels and waited a bit. When we were let onto the field to line up on the sidelines, I discovered that the stadium had some of the best turf I had ever stood on. It was easily the nicest field that I have ever been on! We got all lined up, got the green light and played our pre-game show. Unfortunately, we were amplified throughout the stadium, so the reverb was really hard to play through, but the marching experience was absolutely amazing! 

After pre-game, we went back to our seats to watch the first half. I very quickly discovered that earplugs were mandatory if I wanted to hear anything after the game. The announcer and the sound effects were really loud. We watched the first quarter and most of the second quarter in our seats before heading back down through the stadium to the field to prepare for halftime. When halftime hit, we were treated with the OSU band halftime. The Aggie Marching Band cheered them on quite profusely, and we were probably their biggest fans for a minute. As soon as they were done, we ran onto the field to play our halftime show, which was a reprise of one we had done earlier in the season. We played music from Shrek consisting of Funkytown and I’m a Believer. Once again, the reverb was a problem, but we were successful in working through it and playing a really great show! And once again, I was struck with how nice the turf was.

We finished our show and went back to our seats, where we played our short tunes and other stand tunes when we could. Once again, the volume of the stadium was crazy loud. We watched the third and fourth quarters and we all went bananas when we somehow managed to win the game! The technology in the stadium was really cool, as whenever either team did anything, the stadium’s many screens would change the accent colors of the stadium to that team’s colors and seeing the stadium blue and white with the proclamation that we had won was an exhilarating experience! After the win and the awards ceremony, we headed out to the parking lot where we were able to briefly meet the OSU band. We were fed dinner and we changed out of our uniforms. We ended up driving through the night to get back into Logan around 1:00 pm. It was another 12-hour stint on the bus, but I was glad to be off the bus and in December weather again. I rested that day and then drove home for Christmas that Monday. All in all, I think that the LA Bowl was a ton of fun! It’s experiences and performances like that that drew me back to marching band in college. It was a blast!