Swan Song

Welcome back, kids.

So today's installment is Midland High Orchestra's Spring Concert, which I think is Alayna's last orchestra concert ever (unless you count that Senior recital thingy that she has later on in the month, but I'm not sure what all that entails.) Anyway, this was pretty run-of-the-mill as far as high school orchestra concerts go - started at like 7pm, lasted an hour a half, was at Central Auditorium (notorious for giving one a sore back after extended sitting), and we were all home by 9pm. Now, usually these Spring Concerts run a little longer, because Mrs. Mammassian (the orchestra teacher) likes to acknowledge all of the seniors in the orchestra halfway through the concert, detailing their progress over the years and talking about their future plans, but she announced earlier that they would only be mentioning the seniors briefly this evening due to complaints (the last couple years have run looooong). I guess the plan is to do a much more in-depth senior awards ceremony next week or something.

Who knows, I got like one or two senior awards thingies every week this month, it's nuts.

Anyway, as always I was forced to cut all the video from this post (because each of the songs they performed were between five and ten minutes in length, which exceeds Blogger's file limit), but I did throw in some pictures for you guys. 

Enjoy. . .

Following the Concert Orchestra (which neither of my children participate in) kicked things off with three songs, Honors Orchestra came on to do one. Both my kids are in that one, but for whatever reason I completely forgot to take a video of it - totally out of character for me, I don't know. The only pic we got of it was the one where they're standing up for applause (not this one here, the one before it.) Anyway, the last ensemble to perform was the Symphony Orchestra, which as you know both girls are in.

Symphony Orchestra (feat. Alayna on violin and Abby on Cello.)

Alayna and her stand partner kill some time with Rock-Paper-Scissors while Ms. Mammassian repairs some kid's violin string between songs. Seriously.

Abby and the cellos.

Violins

The two opening songs were good (second one started off with a couple rough measures, but they locked in after that.)

Between this second and the final song, Mammassian once again took the time to acknowledge the Seniors in the Orchestra. Alayna was called up first, which we were not prepared for - the video that I did get (which ran long so, sadly, you can't watch it) cut off at the beginning where she's reading Alayna's name.

Again, just a quick acknowledgement of the Seniors that are sailing off into the sunset this year.

Dad got one with his phone, too.

Lexi (of course, she's like second-in-command in the Orchestra behind the teacher) presenting Ms. Mammassian with flowers from the Seniors.

The last performance of the evening saw the orchestra joined by the Meister (however you spell that) singers, along with alumni from the band, choir and orchestra (including our neighbor, Dave, on bass second from right.)

That last song was awesome, and the ensemble on stage rightfully got a standing ovation.

Afterwards, we had to fight the throngs of spectators in the auditorium to make it back to this back room where performers can mingle with audience members after they put away their instruments and crap. The Larsons came out to watch Alayna's final performance, so we made sure to get a pic of them with her.

Sisters.

Dad and Cindy drove up from Clare to watch the girls' showcase this evening, too.

One with Lexi.

With Mom.

That one Sara chick that she works with at Taco Bell.

Those two and their respective boyfriends (as you saw earlier this month at Prom.)

One with Sebastian.

The Houghs, 2.0

With Ms. Mammassian (she always insists getting one with her following these things.)

Thus concludes the Cannonball's final orchestral performance. Fittingly, she left her music binder (at left, here) at Central Auditorium when we took off at the end of the night.

- Brian

Yuletide Chaos

What's up, gang.

Well, we had ourselves yet another chaotic, Holiday weekend here at the House House. Our calendar fills up so damn fast this time of year that there's barely any breathing room on one's day off. Taking this into consideration, I took a 'mental health' day off of work on Friday, 12/8, in order to take care of crap around the house, run some errands, do some Christmas shopping, and otherwise get a little 'down time' in before the weekend's multiple engagements came roaring in.

And roar in it did, folks. Check it out. . . 

First up was Alayna's 'gig' at the Dow Gardens. The Midland High Orchestra collaborates with multiple locations throughout the city - businesses, nursing homes, hospitals, restaurants, whatever - and sends out kids some of their students to perform little mini-concerts throughout the city. It's a pretty cool program, and the students can get volunteer hours for it. The orchestra teacher usually pulls from the Honors Orchestra kids, seeing how they're the advanced group, and so Alayna usually performs at one or two of these gigs per week.

This time around it was just her on violin, her friend Lexi on cello, and some other random girl on bass. . . doing a little concerto thingy, just missing the viola (not sure if one was originally scheduled or not.)

Dressed up for the performance, of course.

Kris, Mom and Abby went down there to watch her perform (along with her orchestra teacher, Ms. Mamassian) - I was back at the house, wrapping up gifts.

Mini-Christmas concertos.

Stamps of approval.

After the hour-long performance, Kris got a couple pics of the quartet (minus the viola.)

Would it kill her to dress up in quasi-formal clothes for stuff like this? Nothing says 'concerto' like Chucks and a cut-off tee. . .

The next morning, Kris and I ran more errands around town, taking care of groceries and more Holiday crap while the girls were both at school. Once they got back, we shoved dinner down them real fast then drove over to the Central Auditorium for Northeast's Winter Concert. Because Abby is in the 8th Grade Orchestra (shown here), we had to sit through an hour's worth of 6th and 7th Grade orchestral performances first (though the majority of this was the wait between shows, where they had to strip and re-arrange the seating.)

Obviously, the 8th Grade Orchestra is the best one of the night, seeing how they're the veterans and everything, but they ran into some trouble this evening with timing.

Abby and her cello.

After the show, which I thought was pretty good but Abby was super upset about, the Johnsons and us managed to wrangle our girls together for the usual, after-concert, in-front-of-the-Christmas-Tree pics. . .

Not sure what's happening here.  Someone needs to get this kid a helmet.

In case you ever wanted some pictures of Abby and her cello, here's a bunch. . .

(. . . and another one with Ella.)

I'm sure their teacher would appreciate the instruments being used like this. . .

The very next morning, bright and early ( 6am, seriously), Ella was dropped off at our house. Getting Abby out of bed at 5:30am was loads of fun, but both girls had to be around and ready to hit the road for their 8am Pom Clinic down in Canton, MI. The Northeast pom coach wanted the entire team to go, but only eight of the girls ended up making it. We were concerned that we'd have to drive girls downstate for this, but - THANK GOD - one of the other pom moms offered to pick up Abby and Ella from our house and shulttle them down so we wouldn't have to worry about it. A good thing, too, as that may have killed me.

A bunch of schools throughout the state sent middle school teams downstate to participate in this event, which was a free, six-hour practice session. All the attending schools practiced and learned a new routine together, then took turns performing said routine within their own teams. My own school's team was there, and a few of my students actually got to meet Abby (I had mentioned how I have a daughter on the Northeast pom team, so they were on the look out.)

While Abby was still away downstate, Kris and I headed out to Freeland for her annual work Christmas dinner. Dr. Anderson selected Apple Mountain for the evening, and we rolled in around 6pm. Food was pretty good, but I only ate like half of mine and ended up boxing up the rest for a future lunch or whatever (I ordered a steak sandwich and they basically took a 12 oz tenderloin and slapped it between two huge loaves of bread, it was enormous.)

After dinner (which took a couple hours), the staff requested a group pic in front of the tree. This picture sealed the deal for Yours Truly: I'm getting a f***ing haircut. My receding hairline doesn't work with hair pulled back, gonna have to cut off my long, luscious locks. . .

The next morning, everyone had to scramble in order to make an early morning Advent church service downtown at First United Methodist Church (Kris' old church) because some bishop she likes hearing was doing the sermon. By the time we got back home around lunchtime, Kris started making practice batches of cake-cookies (I guess that's a thing?) in order to brush up on her baking skills for next weekend's big Christmas party over at the Sheahan's place.

These were really, really sweet - like, you can eat one bite before going into shock. She's gonna have to scale it back for next weekend.

In the afternoon, the girls at youth group over at the other church, and while they were out of the house Kris and I headed into the basement and wrapped up all the frickin' Christmas presents we've accumulated thus far. While we were doing this (and I apologize for not getting any pictures of this hours-long process, by the way), we did a Christmas movie marathon. Klaus, White Christmas, and my personal second-favorite Christmas movie, A Muppet Family Christmas.

After the presents were taken care of, the girls returned home, we had dinner, and then settled into another Holiday movie session. Thus concludes one of the busiest weekends we've had in a long, long time, folks. 'Tis the f***ing Season. . .

- Brian