time.

what a weird four letter word. it holds so much power with it, too. 

it's bizarre to think that two years ago today, i was frantically finishing a presentation for the parents of governor's school participants. a year ago today, i was hanging out around the house, worrying about chores and packing for a road trip two weeks out. today, i'm worrying about getting the smoke out of the blankets i took camping last night and about getting a cowboy to pay enough attention to me to take me out. 

time. what a silly thing. my friends have their mission calls and are preparing for the fateful day when they will enter the MTC. other friends are fretting over the details of another fateful day: their wedding day. and yet others are worrying about getting all their summer vacation tucked into the next few weeks. then there's me, just worrying about my job, my crippled love life, and remembering people's names. 

time. it slips away from you. i can't believe that i haven't seen my sister in six weeks, my family in six months, some of my friends in over a year. it's just wrong. it makes me ache for the "good times" back. those careless summer nights when we played hide-and-go-seek in the backyard of nice neighbors. those crazy fall nights when i spent all night in a ridiculous costume, freezing my butt off, cheering for the football team. those awful spring nights where i was up until midnight or one am writing a paper. i'm gonna say it: i miss high school. don't get me wrong, there are something things i DON'T miss. but the simplicity of life sure was nice. i miss my laurel friends. the semi-adult life stinks, man.

i want the simplicity of life back. 

marching contests and football season catch up

in the last couple of weeks, the band has gone to a couple of different band competitions. the first we went to was at sullivan north high school for the "music in the foothills" competition. we did really well all things considered, although the guard didn't even place. the band placed first in drum majors, second in percussion, third (last of 3) in guard/majorettes, first in the AAAA division, first in the AAA and AAAA combined section, and then first in the over all competition. after review of the scores, our guard just happened to be the guard that the judge didnt particularly like the most. the ride there and back on the bus was so much fun. we colored and talked and slept and talked some more, vedged on some food and did all the fun stuff that you do on band buses. (on a PG level, of course)

the second and last competition was the most fun. just kidding! it wasnt as far away as the first competition was so we didnt stop at any point in time in the ride. therefore we were allowed to enjoy a little more time together before we left. my dad took me over to the high school as soon as the band room opened so that i could hang out with my freshie, talk, polish a horn or two with a friend, and do some last minute practicing before we loaded up the truck and headed out. by this point in time, i had been adopted as the guard member on loading crew (for away events for the band) and therefore helped put tubas, drums, trombones, etc. on the truck before we left. as a joke the parent in charge of loading crew wanted dillion (the senior on loading) to pack so compactly so that we could fit the gator on the truck if we werent going to be renting a trailor. of course we rented a trailor, but if we hadnt we could have easily put the gator on the truck if we wanted to. the drive up to sequoyia high school wasnt awful and it went by rather quickly. when we got to sequoyia, we started to unload the truck, and when the bass drums came of the truck, one of the cases got put too far underneath the truck and a rim on one side of the drum got smashed. mr. clemons, the percussion instructor, wasnt at the competition, so mr. rogers was the first to hear about it. and of course he was super pissed about the whole thing. thank goodness that the home band was there so we just borrowed their smallest bass drum and problem solved. we ended up being the largest band at the "Band Jam" competition so we got all the first places in the AAAA division, we won the AAA and AAAA division and then won the HUGE trophy for overall. unfortunately the HUGE trophy is a traveling trophy which means that we have to send it back to Sequoia next year. ;(

the football team won against william blount and so we went into the playoffs. we traveled to sevier county and on the way there hit a four car collision. the resulting traffic jam resulted in a two hour hold up and we missed the first half of the game. we had to pull over to a gas station because one of the girls in the back had to use the bathroom so bad. we then got the school just in time to warm up, quickly watch sevier county's band who graciously went first, and then we went on. we did a really good run of the first three songs and then marched off because of the buzzer. the band didnt take the third quarter off because we missed the first half. Farragut won against Sevier County 41-21 and we will proceed in the play offs against maryville on friday. we would have played at home, but maryville won... guess there goes our chance at getting very far in the playoffs.......... ;(

the last home game aka senior night

the last home football game is alwasy hard. but this one was extra hard. our running back coach for the football team passed away thursday night of some diabetic related heart problems. he also had pancreatic cancer. yesterday during first block we had a moment of silence for Mr. Shoup and his family. a lot of the school felt the repercussions of his death, so the guidance counselors were in a classroom all day to offer counseling to any student or teacher that felt like they needed to. the football team was called down into the gym to talk to the head coach about what was going to happen about last nights game.

the cheerleaders made a sign with "do it 4 shoup" written on it, and the football team helped make "rs do it for shoup" bracelets for the entire student body, staff, and any attendee at the game. the senior class also made some flags that they flew that had the same slogan on it. on one they printed their hand, and then made some comments for shoup. i felt for one of my friends. she has been through a lot the past couple of weeks. her grandfather passed away a couple of weeks ago and she was very close to Mr. Shoup to see him pass away, it be senior night, and having to listen to everyone screaming "do it for shoup!" was very hard for her. she was very emotional and almost made me cry many many times.

here is a link and story about Ryan Shoup and some other events of the football game.
http://www.wbir.com/news/article/139374/5/Update-Farragut-assistant-football-coach-remembered-by-brother


the band recgonized the seniors as well as the football team last night. sadly that meant a lot more crying for the guard. we will be loosing only four members this year, but the smaller the amount the harder it is to say good-bye quite frankly. we had to do our show after the game again, but this time we were actually allowed on the field to do what we wanted during half time. the lenior city band stayed to watch, of course.

farragut beat lenior city 16-7.

bearden vs. farragut #2

the rivalry game is always the biggest game of the year. the stands are packed and the crowd is semi attentive to the game. the people there at the game usually are there to watch Farragut beat Bearden, or vice versa depending on where you go. the bands are not allowed to have the rivalry spirit in the hopes of being good sports and the on-lookers arent usually awful to us (us, being the band members). but apparently a couple years back they had some issues with band members so they dont want us to go past the bearden section without a buddy/group.

no big pranks this year, which was probably a very good thing. although we had a big injury. one of the starters was running a play and a bearden player ended up taking the dude down and messing with his ankle. BAD... all of the ligaments in his ankle, his ankle, and some open fracture leg material. needless to say he was screaming in pain, they had him on an IV and a stretcher before they even thought about getting him off the field. unfortunately that was the sad part. good part? FARRAGUT BEAT BEARDEN WITH LIKE 0 SECONDS ON THE CLOCK!!! for a little while we didnt think we were going to win, but we pulled ahead winning 32-26 with literally like 0.3 seconds on the clock.

farraguts band didnt end up getting to perform during half time because of the baseball team recognition and the can drive announcement (of course bearden won, we wont be getting into those details) and bearden's band did their entire show like THEY WERENT SUPPOSED TO! but we were responsible people and we got off the field BEFORE the team got penalized for "game delay". we did the show after the game and we had some stragglers stay and watch.

thanks guys! :)

the catch all posts of all catch all posts

i sincerely apologize for not keeping this updated! lol the last couple of weeks have been hectic beyond imagine, between school, band, church, and the naps i steal in between, i have had little free time. and thats partially bad time management on my part. but im working on it and i hope to keep up with the time and manage it better. lol

what has happened since the last post you ask?

well a lot of things lol

since then:
 i have been allowed to drive a good 12 times on the road. i was soo excited.

school started and i feel the consequences of having two honors plus an ap class in addition to band. friday     and wednesday nights are killer but by some miracle i make it all work.

the football season started and the team played three games: dobyns-bennett, oak ridge, and catholic. db was a blow out loss, oak ridge went into sudden death but we pulled it off and won, and catholic was a close game. with the catholic game we were up the first half, but going into the second we just lost it. a bunch of dropped passes and bad running. as you might have guessed we lost, leaving the team 1-2.

i started the Book of Mormon over again, and i am currently chugging along with 12 columns a day trying to read the BoM by the end of October. it is going to be close, but i think im going to make it.

my parents decided to take an anniversary trip (almost unheard of in my family) to dc. actually my dad was there for business, and he surprised her with an extra ticket to dc. she got the exciting courtesy of staying in an impressive 5 star hotel room, of course with a beautiful view of the potomac; or at least thats what ive heard lol

i went to Hoops for Hope and was allowed the privilege to help the team "managers" with the Down-Syndrome kids. such a neat experience. they are the sweetest things and i dont think ive been hugged so many times in one day. it was a really neat experience and i am soo excited for next year.

i went to a church activity with the entire stake plus one of the neighboring stakes. so i got to see my friend-boy that i really really like, and he likes me back. (: i know the hopeless romantic is coming out in me. but that night we added two more songs to our list of "our songs". we now cannot listen to hey soul sister, your love is my drug, and the only exception without thinking about each other. at least thats how i feel lol we cant really talk because he doesnt have unlimited texting (or i dont have the right phone service, either way) and i dont have a facebook. but im working on the facebook thing. mom and dad are contemplating it still.


that is really about it. my life has been sucked into the vortex of school, band, and the minuscule social life i  have. i barely have a life outside of that and any extra time i have is spend reading the Book of Mormon or sleeping. cuz i sure have not received the doctor-perscriped 9 hours of sleep in a LONG time. try more like 6-7 hours a night. it is really difficult to keep my eyes open during notes and videos and it really really stinks. but i guess thats high school. time to suck it up lol

winning streak brought to abrupt halt

an abrupt halt it was, thats for sure. maryville brought thier game yesterday and won. 35-15 rebels was the final score. sad, sad day. after half time, idk if farragut got sloppy, or if the refs just started calling things to allow maryville to win, but there were several flags thrown over our plays. now i know how it feels to be cheering for a losing team... :( no fun. maryville's first touchdown of the fourth quarter was made through an interception, from none other than reese browning, on our 25, all the way to their in zone. the guy slipped through like four guys' tackles and got the touchdown. so they kicked the ball off, we missed it, we set it up on thier 20 yard line. we start the play and make it to our in zone, but one of the refs had thrown a flag and made the touchdown invalid. stinkin' refs. after that, at least four more flags were thrown on our plays. but none on ANY of maryville's. me and some friends counted at least four plays that should have been flagged, but b/c the refs were biased, they left maryville to themselves.

i did well as far as work and the show goes. we did another stand still performance, and i think we all did very well, band and guard and majorettes. during the first quarter, the drum majors handed us tickets to redeem a drink later on. i chose to get hot chocolate just b/c i was a little cold. the hot chocolate definitely held to its name. my tongue is now burnt in several places and it hurts to play clarinet, eat, or even to swipe across my teeth. it going to be a long healing process...

football as of late

so i havent had the time to blog a whole lot lately. school, band, and all that jazz we have to call life.

the overview of the season has gone as so:
maryville: took pep band b/c of costs score: 35-32 maryville
lenior city: theres a story with this one:

the visitor stands at lenior city are weird. they go up several more rows on one side and then the other only has like 5 rows or so. because of this odd arrangement, some of the lower brass and woodwinds ended up closer to the guard then to the band. i was in the back corner, so i had turned around to talk to some of the band members and socialize. during a song, i always turned forward and participated in the school spirit. so later on in the game, after half time, i was turned around talking to the band members and when i turned back around, i got yelled at for being outside my section. needless to say i was not happy with this because these less than uplifting words were not coming from a captain's, band director's, or instructor's mouth; they were coming from a sophomore that is very much a control freak. me and her are not the best of friends and often find faults in each others lives. other than that little miss-fit i did very well and didn't forget any work or drop to my memory. the football team dominated and one of my friends actually score the final extra point to make the grand score 42-7 admirals

william-blount was the next opponent. we dominated and ended up winning 45-0.

oh then the play offs started!! woo hoo!

ooltewah was the first rounds opponent. when we arrived we were "welcomed" with a sign below the score board that read "HEY ADMIRALS, THE COWBOYS WANT THEIR UNIFORMS BACK!" (we actually didn't steal the star from them, we have the rights to use it unlike another school in this county *cough*carter*cough*). then the football team decided to run through a banner with the scores from last years games. both of which ooltewah had won. but heres the catch, ooltewah lost their star running back because of injuries i do believe, and we had beat them in the scrimmage WITH him. so i was pretty confident in our winning ability. the band was not performing at all, and so the guard was allowed to wear whatever! woo hoo!!! of course it was cold so we all layered like three times over. we of course whooped their butts: 24-7 admirals.

then of course the bearden game.
and the maryville game is yet to come.

bearden vs. farragut= huge rivalry...

so the football team has quite the rivalry going with bearden. two days before the big game, three idiots decided to vandalize the bearden football field and facilities. those three nincompoops got their fat butts landed in jail. two of them were eighteen so guess where they got to go: real grown up boy jail. the third was put in juvenile b/c of his age. one of the guys, i dont remember who, had to spend a couple of days in jail/juvenile because his parents were in europe and refused to pay his bail. they pretty much said, "you got yourself in this mess, you can suffer the consequences". haha sucker! then all three had to be escorted into bearden and had to publically apologize to the entire student body! woo hoo, you talk about punishment!! then much to my horror, our sga president had to get up and speak as well. poor kid. it wasn't even his doing and he got pulled into it.

do you want to know how the three guys were found out:
a) they left a spray can there
b)they left a receipt in the bag in a trash can
c)one of them was stupid enough to write his number somewhere
d) they were reckless and stupid in their acts and BOASTED about it!!
(the complete idiots, i dont know what happened to them, but im pretty sure it wasn't pretty...)

the band went to the game on friday, but because of rainy weather they postponed it until saturday. unfortunately that was the day we had our first competition in greenville. so we didnt go to see the end of the football game.

and of course we dominated the field and pulled away in the lead! 48-17 was the final score. DOMINATION!! GO FARRAGUT!


well then this past week we played them again. we beat them by one touchdown: 10-3. we played very well i thought and now we go on to play maryville in the next round this friday!!! WOO HOO! GO FARRAGUT!!

Farragut and UT Football

first things first: the ut/gator game was a pitiful excuse for a game. come on: 18-8. for all the times we were near the end zone, we should have made a touchdown. and if we had done that, we would have beat the gators. boo gator boo!

next thing: farragut football!! farragut vs. west at west. we beat west by ten points 26-6. because of a thunderstorm that was rolling in, they delayed the game at least an hour. they started the game, but after a couple of plays, lightning was spotted, so they had to pause the game. the band ended up in the auditorium (nice auditorium, not so hot bathrooms). but i have to tell you a story about our uniforms:

when we left the high school shortly before six, it was sprinkling, so mr. rogers said that we would be going in summer band uniforms (t-shirt and khakis) and we would bring our normal uniforms just in case. guard decided that we would keep our leotards on and wear the uniform over top the leotard. so when we GOT to west, we were informed by our captains that we were going to have to take our leotards OFF! and just wear the band uniform. but here's the catch: we weren't allowed to leave the bus. we were to change, with guys on the bus, into just the summer uniform. needless to say, there weren't to many girls happy about that fact, so we ended up wearing the leotard and the summer uniform.

again, we failed to do our entire show, but we didn't even march the show because half time was so short. we stood in concert set and performed our first and last song. pretty much none of our work with the last song was together because not everyone knew the correct counts. needless to say, it looked pretty terrible. the third song at least.

FOOTBALL!!

OK, so in the past three days, there have been two major football games, that i have attended: the Farragut vs. catholic game, and the university of Tennessee vs. western Kentucky university. both huge games. the Farragut game was on Thursday and let me just say that we left those Irish men in the dust. 20-12 was the final score with some really good plays. (for the entire details, Farragut has a really good article on it: http://www.farragutpress.com/articles/2009/09/11161.html) we didn't do all of our show again, partially because we don't know all of our charts. but we are working on it.

the UT/ western Kentucky game was a piece of cake. western Kentucky is ranked right now, 120 out of 120. that's pretty sad. but we beat them, so no problems. 63-7 was the final score UT. i was serving the mini-melts and they didn't sell too well for us. i don't know what it was about them, they just didn't sell.

both games were awesome, but the Farragut game was more fun.

another football game

this football game was an away game at oak ridge. the bus ride was fun because we played band shoes and then slaps. we sang along to a couple of songs until Mrs. Lewis came and repremended us for interrupting a conversation. she pretty much told us if she heard us again that we would have a silent bus.

it was different not being the home team and not knowing where to go, but i had a good time. we mingled a little with the oak ridge band and i got to know a couple of band members better. both oak ridge and we performed our half time shows but i did not have the pleasure of seeing it very well. i didnt drop my flag and was in the right spot all of the time. we learned some new work this past week and i was a little late on some of the work, but not all of it. farragut beat oak ridge 32-7.

the bus ride back was quieter, but we still got yelled at for being very loud: the guys were playing various versions of the game slaps. some of the many hand positions were facing up and down, facing sideways, two fingers agianst the inside of your wrist right on top of the vein, and 6 inches away from your bicep. all versions were quite painful and made your palms red and stinging. it was 11:30 before i crawled into bed last night and i was exhausted too.

FARRAGUT FOOTBALL IS FINALLY HERE!

its football time in FARRAGUT! woo hoo! our first football game was last week and it was a lot of fun! we, the band, had to be at the high school an hour and a half before kick off. in that hour and a half, the band performed the show standing still in the Garden (a special memorial garden for a student that passed away in a car accident), marched down to the field, and polished all brass instruments. its rather interesting when you walk into the band room after the brass has been polished; it smells funky, and the corner by the closet has a dusty haze to it. but we have good times in that room. the guard had time to set a couple of flag situations straight and continue a couple of traditions: a promise, a prayer, a couple of warm-ups, and a home game tradition: boom chicka boom. good times, good times. then because we are the home team, we had the honor of playing the National Anthem, and performing the huge "F" that the football players run through. we played a couple of stand tunes during the first and fourth quarter. some of my favorites are: the dance of 1000 waters ("...why are you so blue? is it because your number 2? because we're number 1! woo!); everybody dance now; go, fight, win; and another one that i cant remember the name. the guard and majorettes have a dance to each of the stand tunes that the band will play and they all are hilarious. during half time, we performed our show. it was a lot of fun and i remembered all of my spots and work. DB didn't bring a marching band, just a prep band. their band program is HUGE (easily over 500 students total) and their pep band was as big as our marching band. farragut ended up winning against dobyn-bennett high school 29-7.