2011 Crystal Mtn Spring Break

2011 Crystal Mtn Spring Break, a photo by J-Travels on Flickr.

The Janezic and Magee families enjoyed a day on the slopes together. Thanks to the Lestingi family's hospitality this was all possible.

Laura hit the slopes for the first time in over 15 years and Ryan made his first foray today just weeks before his 12th birthday. Can't wait until day 2.

Lisa's New Car

Lisa's New Car, a photo by J-Travels on Flickr.

We took delivery of Lisa's new ride yesterday so I hustled out to take pictures of it today before it gets dirty. I tried to convince her that black would match the new boat but she preferred the blue. (Of course she preferred the black boat over the blue boat, go figure.)

Turns out that the 2011 Chevy Traverse is a pretty nice ride when you select just about every option. And the 0% financing is simply awesome.

Enjoy the new car Lisa. :-)

SPC Reunion

SPC Reunion, a photo by J-Travels on Flickr.

Mary Herion and I made a last minute decision to attend the SPC reunion.

It was great to see some of the old friends and faculty from days gone by. I even spent quite a while chatting with my first girlfriend but somehow failed to get a picture with her. Okay, she claims I was her first boyfriend so that must have made her my first girlfriend. She's going to send a photo as evidence and I promise to post it after I receive it along with any other photos that are shared with me.

It never ends

So today started with an awards breakfast (a.k.a. coffee and donuts) for students that made the honor role.

Great job boys and the donuts were good too. :)

The show goes on, and on, and on...

The LMS Chorus was invited to share the evening program at CL South HS tonight. I would have taken a picture of the CLS combined chorus but my battery died. Suffice to say it's pretty darn big and they sounded great as well.

Overall the show lasted an hour with the HS chorus performing a 35 minute requiem. The show was free but it turns out I would have paid for the hour of non-distraction and complete self-indulgence.

Oh well. Now that that's over it's time to get back to clearing email, finishing spreadsheets, and posting to the blog (doing that right now!).

I need to get up early because tomorrow is the High Honors and Lundahl Lion Society breakfast at the boys' school. They claim this is hard to earn but seeing that both boys got invitations I'm a wee bit skeptical, very proud, or both. I've also been told that I can't talk to either one of them at the breakfast because I might embarrass them. Who me? :)

IGSMA Concert

IGSMA Concert a video by J-Travels on Flickr.

Here's a 90-second teaser video of the boys and their school band in this weekend's competition. If you need more scroll down to the prior post with You Tube links for each song. Enjoy.

LMS Musical - Joseph

LMS Musical - Joseph a photo by J-Travels on Flickr.

The boys had their Joseph performances this weekend. As the fates would have it all the grandparents were able to attend and I believe everybody thoroughly enjoyed the show. By the time of this posting, Eileen may even have her hearing back.

Great work boys. I continue to be impressed.

This week with instruments

In case you don't know both John and Jacob are members of the Lundahl Middle School (LMS) Purple Band. There are three levels of bands at LMS with White being the entry level and Purple and Gold members are selected by audition at the beginning of the school year. Both boys tested into Purple. Jacob is now 4th seat clarinet and John is 6th - I think there are around 10 in this band.

The LMS Purple Band competed against about 20 different bands and ensembles this past Saturday. I don't know how many advanced to State competition but I know they didn't all advance. The LMS Purple band did.

So if you're interested in what hard work by students and a director can do in less than 1 school year together sounds like then take a listen. If you want to hear what really solid teaching sounds like then sit through some of the post-performance instruction by one of the judges. You'll hear that he is firm, fair, has opinions rooted in evidence, and has explicit recommendations for improvement. Really a quality, formative day for the kids.

Oh yeah, great job boys. Congratulations. :)

Videos posted by another mom on You Tube:

- Project March

- The Rowan Tree

- Above the World

- teaching clinic for Project March

- teaching clinic for Rowan Tree

- teaching clinic for Above the World

The results are in...

The LMS chorus has advanced to the next level and will compete again at the end of April. Great work by all.

LMS IGSMA Competition

Okay, the title of this post tells it all but just in case you don't have your decoder ring...

The Lundahl Middle School chorus competed in the Illinois Grade School Music Association competition today in Woodstock, IL. We didn't have time to stay for all of the competitors and seeing that John performed at 7:40 a.m. we didn't really have that strong of an interest in sticking around until 5:00 p.m. when the whole program ended.

The LMS Chorus did very well and scored a 1 on a 3-point scale (I believe a 1 was a high score). Stick around to the end of the video to catch a couple of snippets of the group that followed John's. Enjoy the video. Great job John.