Funeral

Someone related to members of our church passed away last week and had a memorial service at our church this morning. He'd left instructions of how he wanted everything to go, and one of the requests was that the school children sing at the service. The younger grades opted out, but Mr. E took the 5-6th graders over to church to sing "Jesus Loves Me". I was going to go too, but he said he'd take care of it. It was nice to have a quiet room to myself for a bit!

I used the time to plan next week's lessons and tidy up the room a bit. Yesterday, one of the 6th grade girls lamented that everyone in our class is breaking everything. This year we've had at least two exercise balls pop, the ball pump broke, all our glue sticks used up, paper on the floor, etc. She ended with, "This is why we can't have nice things!"

Yesterday afternoon I asked Mrs. L if she remembered when we last bought bell gloves because ours are getting holes in them (like un-reparable holes) and I wanted to order more. She couldn't remember, but knew it wasn't all that long ago. I searched through my email and discovered it was only two years ago, almost to the day! She texted back, "Lol, this is why we can't have nice things!" Huh, where have I heard that before???

Today during bell practice, I went over how to correctly take off the gloves and fold them together. I think part of the abnormal wear and tear is that they flip them halfway inside out when they take them off, so the fingers are stuck in a bunch. Then they have to pull on them to get them right side out. Plus having them all scrunched up keeps the sweat in so they stink faster. Hopefully they'll all remember to take off their gloves the way I showed them and the new gloves will last longer.

Our performance last night went decently well. The projector designer didn't put in a slide for the sermon, it just went straight to 'offering/bell choirs' after the pre-sermon song, so a bunch of us stood up to play and Pastor had to tell us to sit down for a bit. Oops. They played well, even the song they thought was going to be a train-wreck. We were going to practice our Fine Arts Fair songs at church today, so I left the bell cases over there after the service last night. Then at lunchtime I remembered the funeral. The meal would probably be going on at the time we wanted to practice... should we chance it? Or bring the bells back to school? Bring the bells back to school. So over noon recess I grabbed a few of the girls and we hauled them back over.

Practice went okay. There are a few measures they just can't get the timing right. Thankfully, we have a few more days to practice. Due to the potentially bad storm this weekend, they officially postponed the FAF until next Saturday. I guess this weekend will be an apartment-bound one! I have a gigantic stack of books from the library and a few things I want to make in the kitchen. I'm sure I'll be able to occupy myself...