Our First Parade

Monday, January 21st, was Martin Luther King Civil Rights Day. We had a parade downtown. Normally I don’t go to parades anymore. But this was different; my youngest daughter was in it. Her Jr. High band found out on Jan 12 that they were going to be marching.

The kids had not done any kind of marching practice so I was a little concerned about how they would handle staying together; not to mention playing while they “marched”. There were about 6 or 7 Jr. High bands in the parade. The first one was in the same situation ours was. They were in a tight group and didn’t even try to march, just tried to stay together. One band in the middle of the parade had uniforms and showed signs of having done a lot of marching practice – they were the best, but they had practiced, too.

Our kids were the last band and I have to commend their band director! Those kids lined up and did pretty well at keeping the lines straight. The band director was also the tuba player and he didn’t have any other adults helping him with the band.

For most of the parade, I walked with them and did the “parent thing” with my camera. Overall, I was really proud of all of them. They gave it a really great effort! I think we are going to love being band parents! TK has been talking about starting a band parents/band boosters group to help the band director.

The saddest part was when I asked how many had parents/family coming; only about five kids said they had someone coming.

Oh, that's a tongue in the tuba horn.

TK was really excited about this picture. He loved that the Honor Guard was in step with each other enough that it almost looks like one set of legs!