I put this off for a really long time. I mean, Samantha's been taking harp for nearly 7 years and this is the first year we've done institute. It has just been a price and time commitment we haven't been willing to make. But Samantha has worked really hard this year, and we decided to sign her up. Of course, this also meant signing me up which was really the difficult part. An entire week of harp classes (with a few arts and crafts thrown in for fun.) A couple of nice things about it: 1) it was at the U at Libby Gardener Hall which meant there wasn't a long commute or travel involved, and 2) my neighbor also signed her daughter up so we were able to split our time and take turns sitting in the classes and not have to spend the entire day there every day, and 3) Samantha's teacher (who also had her daughter there) was willing to cover a lot of the transportation to get the girls there and back so I was able to kind of get things settled at home before leaving for the day. Things weren't perfect at home, but those things definitely helped.
While I was a little torn on my feelings for institute, Samantha was not. She loved it and can't wait to do it again. Although Jan or I were there sitting in on her music classes, she clearly loved the independence she had. She loved being able to roam the halls and go to her classes with her friends without adult supervision all the time.
And I think she even learned a couple of things along the way as far as the harp goes, so all in all it was a very positive experience for her.
It is becoming very obvious that she is ready for a larger harp, but we are still working on wrapping our minds around that particular financial commitment. In the meantime, it was nice to have her on the front row with her little folk harp, where I could always see what she was doing. (And nice that Hallee was right next to her, which made things easier for whichever Mom was there to watch and take notes.)
It was pretty cool to see these rooms full of harps and girls playing harps. Samantha, of course, made it a point to look over them all and point out which was her favorite.
Even more impressive was ALL of the harps on the stage for their final concert on Friday afternoon.
Here they are rehearsing before lunch.
Bad phone pictures, but it was all I had. You can sort of see Samantha peeking out there in the middle.
Center stage - not a bad place to be.
Really, it was amazing to see so many harps gathered in one place. Over 100 hundred of them.
Someone mentioned that if we were to calculate the monetary value of the harps on the stage, we may have a heart attack. It was too scary to think about. If one of those were to fall over, it would be like dominoes... I think I was holding my breath every time I watched the girls going to or from their benches.
A very long and exhausting week, but she couldn't be happier.
Hallee and Samantha after the concert before it was time to move all those harps off the stage and load them into the cars. That was logistically impressive as well.
And just because she hadn't had enough individual Mom time or treats for the week, we finished up Institute with a stop at Baskin Robbins for ice cream cones. (Nevermind that her entire face can just about fit inside of that thing.)
I just asked that she please not drip any on her nice white shirt.
She managed to keep it all on her face.
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