Just a Great Evening

Greetings All:

This will be a short blog post.  All I really want to say is I have had just a great evening.  The cause of my amazing good mood is that I had the good fortune to watch my daughter Cassie and her friends and classmates from PVJH put on a terrific (and I do mean terrific and yes I am bias but it was a terrific show, just ask any parent/grandparent/family member in attendance...) version of Beauty and the Beast.  I wrote a blog post last fall about a professional community show I saw in Rock Island.  That post was written with some objectivity.  This post will fail utterly in that regard.  I am an unapologetic and profoundly proud parent of my daughter and her friends.  It was such a super show and as I write this several hours removed I am still giddy (yup giddy, I said it and will own it) thinking about it.

When you see a school show, you see up close the set, the costumes the actors.  You also see all the people behind the scenes who work incredibly hard to pull this off.  Many parents donate time, money, energy to help the show come to life.  Then there are the teachers who live with the show and the (ahem) challenges of dealing with early-stage teenagers.  I tip my hat to all of them.

There is a LOT wrong with our world and I write about that on occasion.  I also comment on people I admire who are doing things to improve it.  I strongly suspect I will be back to writing about that sooner or later.  However, for now, at 10:13 on a Friday night, I am electing not to worry about the rantings of Kim Jung Un (a/k/a Dennis Rodman's newest BFF, learn more on Twitter by checking out @KimJongNumberUN) or sequester or any of the many other things that could keep us up at night.  Nope, right now I am going to sit back and feel my face smile as I think about how wonderful the show was tonight.  I am beyond proud of my daughter and cannot wait to see my Dad's reaction tomorrow night.  I am also proud of her friends who brought their A game and were fantastic!  What adds to the fun of these shows is that Dawn and I know many of these kids and have gotten to be legit friends with many of their parents.  Everyone was happy and their was a collective feeling of uber positive energy.  If we could bottle it and send it to DC, we'd have the budget and debt thing solved.

The other cool thing about tonight was that a number of the high school kids came to the show.  At the end of the show, they went up to their once and future classmates (save the seniors but you get my point) and were congratulating the junior high kids.  It was just fun to watch how thrilled the junior high kids were to see their older friends there.  The whole thing was just great.

It's the weekend so go out and have fun.  I know that not every weekend can be as great as this one so I am going to sit back and revel in it.  As I started this post, I'll conclude with saying, just a great evening.

Best,
J