Chaperoning

 We had an adventure this weekend in Athens, Georgia.  I was a chaperone for Easton's middle school Honors chorus event.  The chosen few from his middle school chorus headed up to Athens (about an hour away) on Friday for hours of practice with other honor chorus students from the district.  They practiced all day with a few breaks.  I arrived by car in the early evening just in time to walk with the herd of middle schoolers to their designated dinner spot.  We wound through the streets of Athens, ending up at a huge park area on the University of Georgia campus.


Chick Fil A dinner was provided for the masses and the kids just hung out and ate and were typical goofy adolescents!  It was fun to watch them in action.  Middle schoolers are loud and really funny!  The girls laugh at everything and purposely do things to get attention, but they only do that when they are in the safety of a huge group of friends....then they just laugh hysterically secretly hoping that everyone around them is watching.  I did some serious observing on my chaperoning adventure!  Boys and girls at this age are so different.  After dinner they went back to practicing some more until 9:30 in the evening.  We headed to the hotel and slowly but surely got everyone in the right rooms and settled in.  I shared a room with another mother chaperone.  Can I just say that it was a super awkward situation to be in, sharing a room with someone you've never met and then trying to sleep.  It was after midnight and I just couldn't sleep.  It was weird to hear someone in the bed next to me breathing/snoring and not know them.  If I go next year I am going to just spend a little extra money and get my own room, maybe even share it with my husband!  Ha!

We got up the next morning and were out the door by 8:20 having eaten breakfast and loaded the cars with everyone's luggage.  The kids headed by bus to the Classic Center for more rehearsal and I hung out in the waiting area crocheting for three hours until we broke for lunch.  The other moms headed to Starbucks for their coffee fix.  They just gotta have their coffee to get 'em going in the morning!  We broke for lunch and took a brisk walk through town to quickly get the the Five Guys.  

We seriously inhaled our hamburgers so we could walk back to the "meet your parents" location to hand off the kids luggage before the concert started.  After the luggage was distributed my chaperone duties were completed.  I went to the concert hall to get a seat and wait for Stephen to appear.  The concert was well done and the music selections were great.  Easton's mixed women/mens group was great and they were very professional.  I loved seeing this bunch a students work so hard and for so long to prepare a top notch performance.  Way to go middle schoolers! 

After the concert we went to a greasy grill to get Easton a celebratory milkshake and some food for Stephen.  That was an adventure!  Stephen and Easton were slurping on their chocolatey shakes while we were browsing through the pictures on my phone that I had taken of the weekend's events.  Stephen reached over the table to grab my phone and knocked over his shake.  It went everywhere!!!!  All over the table, floor, bench and all down the front of Stephen.  He had it on his pants, shirt, jacket, sock, and shoes.  It even went into his boots down to his feet.  Ugh!  He was an absolute mess.  The server helped us clean it up and we got a good laugh out of that one.  Dad was just slightly embarrassed!  Duh!  He's always fun to have around.  We drove home in separate cars.  I took a pit stop at the Outlet mall to get some jeans, poor Stephen just had to go straight home because he was a mess.

Stephen works on cleaning up his mess!