Veteran's Day

Happy Veteran's Day. It was a good day to reflect on the people who fought for this country. Today the high school band was privileged to play for one of the ceremonies. I included the 8th grade band because they are more than capable and they fill out some of the instrumentation. We played the National Anthem and America the Beautiful. This of course brought up a few problems like there was no flute part, so I had to write it, or we don't have America the Beautiful in our music library so I had to arrange it. I found a good choral arrangement and then adapted it to the band. I got that to them yesterday so that we could rehearse it and then play it today.
This morning during band rehearsal, my eighth graders showed up. It was great to hear the whole group together. They are quite a good sounding band. It was awesome to have that many students. It was only 7 more students but it all counts.
We got a lot of compliments and everyone really enjoyed having the band play today. I think they thanked us like 12 times. It definitely meant a lot to the community to have us there.
Of course the program was supposed to start at Noon but we didn't start till about 12:20. We were finally done at about 12:50. This meant that all of my students were late to lunch (by 20 minutes, 30 when you figure we had to get back to the band room and put everything away). So of course they were all late to their next classes and I had 10 minutes to eat lunch. Woohoo.
Otherwise it's been a good day and so far a good week. Hopefully I'm not speaking too soon.
I'm going to go back to my knitting now, I'm about three feet from being done with the afghan for my little brother. The fun never ends.