Choir

Tonight was Kaylee's first Junior High Choir Concert.  They had the usual rule against photography in the auditorium, and one woman even left to go put her camera in the car once she found out she wasn't supposed to have it.  Not me.  I smuggled my Canon in with a big lens, and snapped about 50 pictures.  No flash, and the back screen kind of hidden so it didn't disturb the people behind me.  There were some people who pulled out their phones and flash photo'd away, which was not cool, because it was bright and distracting.

The High School choir groups went first and did several numbers.  They had pretty sparkly dresses that shone in the stage lights, and Kaylee totally wanted one of those dresses instead of their black jumpers.  ;)  I honestly didn't think the older choir was doing all that great of a job for awhile, but don't tell them I said so.  Then the Junior High choir came out, all 96 of them, and the director stopped and told everyone she was amazed and impressed at the Junior High kids, how many of them there are but how they are so well behaved, and she told us that they were great kids, which is nice.  And they did a great job!  They had several numbers, and Kaylee moved around on the stage in different positions.  She had created a diagram on paper for her Grandma where she marked the bleachers and where on the stage she would be for each number.  She had a key on the bottom, where this symbol was for this song, and that symbol for that song, etc.  It was great.  And Grandma referenced it during the concert, too!  After the Junior Highers were done, the high school group came back out for awhile to finish out the evening, and they did a much better job the second half.

You know, when Kaylee told me she wanted to join Choir, I was...surprised and a little unsure.  The girl wouldn't even sing out loud in the car to me.  She wouldn't sing in public at all any more.  I told her she should take a study hall that period instead of choir, but her friends were going to take choir, so she wanted to too.  I thought that was a terrible reason to take choir.  I almost made her take a study hall instead, knowing how helpful that is during school to work on homework.  But after some thought I decided to let her do the choir and see how it went.  Well, she's absolutely loved it, and it's brought her out of her singing shell.  She was singing in Steak-n-Shake tonight in front of all of us and the general public too.  She used to refuse to participate in any plays that were musicals, even though she loves drama.  She said she'd never have a part where she had to sing.  All that's changed.  She's had fun and she's done well with it.  And we really enjoyed watching the concert, too.  I know they'll sell a DVD of the concert, so I took snapshots instead of video so I could have some closeups of her...

I really have too many photos to pick which ones are best for tonight, but some day I'll be catching up on photos on my websites, and then I'll post all the good ones.  For now here are just a few...

Kaylee and her friend Abby hanging out before the concert.

 

Second row from bottom, center of photo.

 

All 96 kids! 

 

 

 

I like this one.  The song is about why can't kids these days be as awesome and perfect as 'we' were.

 

Bottom row right corner.  :)

This one is blurry, but they were doing "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and Kaylee was the windshield wipers on the human car they were making. 

 

 

The Grand Finale...She's on the right side a couple rows up, but good luck.  ;)