Honor Choir Performs at Disneyland! - May 25

My six kiddos I had all year, plus one of Kaitlyn's friends on the end, Josie.

Eating some lunch before the performance!

Such a cutie!

This is a fairly new stage at Disneyland

Our signage for our performance, we got to keep this and received a plaque!

Girls in front of "It's a Small World"

Driving behind a Crazy Driver!

Waiting and waiting for Thunder Mountain

Eating a bite for dinner

I realized I didn't have a picture of the two of us until the very end of our trip!

Michelle, Mrs. Waas (choir director), Kaitlyn and Bailee

 Kaitlyn was able to go and perform at Disneyland with the Honor Choir!  She has worked so hard to and put so much time and effort into this, it was such a wonderful way to end the school year out, with a trip to Disneyland.  I found out that line parents get to go and chaperone the event.  Which, I will have to be honest, I thought would be pretty stressful.  But, a huge plus is that I didn't have to pay for a ticket to get in!  There was a fee to be in Honor Choir, which part of that fee helps pay for the line parents as well as all the kids.  So, I got up and took Ella, Andrew and Kaitlyn to school Friday morning as usual.  Then Kaitlyn got on a school bus full of kids and I rode in a car with some other moms.  The driver had a season pass so we didn't even have to pay for parking!  And she goes to Disneyland a lot and has a secret parking place that is basically reserved for her, right where the buses park, so we were able to meet up with our assigned students so much faster.  We had a fairly smooth experience.  It didn't start off that way at first, I was nervous, when a boy broke his belt at the first bathroom break, and we had to find some black tape to repair it.  Then the same boy spills his soda all the way down the front of his pants!  Disneyland is very particular about the appearance and uniformity of the performers, so I was sweating bullets as they were eating their tomato soup and cheese sandwiches for lunch in their uniforms!  We met up under the Toon Town bridge and found our Disneyland representative that took us back stage.  The line parents of 5th graders got first priority if they wanted to be one of the 10 to go back stage with the choir.  I went and helped out.  It was neat to see how organized and smoothly they run everything.  Once everyone was lined up tallest to shortest they took a group photo in front of a green screen and then they offer a photo with the castle in the background. (I got one and had the choir director sign it for Kaitlyn).  They performed in front of a lot of people!  There was a small band and piano player to accompany them.  They looked and sounded great!  (Some of the kids' shoes/ankles we had to tape up with black tape because of shoe decoration or lack of black socks).  After the show, they went backstage again where they each got a Disneyland performing arts T-shirt.  Then we escorted them out to meet parents.  I signed out 4 of my 6 children, and I had Kaitlyn and one other girl from my group left and we signed out one of Kaitlyn's friends to hang out with us and then some of their friends tagged along as well.  So I hung out with six girls and we rode on some rides.  It was a super busy day and the lines were really long.  But we managed to go on 5 rides, one of which was Thunder Mountain (which I haven't been on before), before heading back to meet everyone for the buses.  Most of the children were checked out and stayed later with their families.  I carpooled there and decided to ride the bus back with Kaitlyn, that way I didn't have to drive home being so tired.  Kaitlyn curled up in my lap and fell asleep on the bus ride home (one of my favorite parts of the trip, besides seeing her perform).  I drove one of her friends home and made sure the others found their parents and we arrived home shortly before 10pm.  It was a fun day.