Band Camp Day 1: Danielle!

I could not sleep last night, I had far too many things on my mind. Things that shouldn't keep me awake at night, things that are completely out of my control. So it was no surprise that I slept through all 10 of my alarms. (They start at 5:30 and go off every five minutes until the time that I need to get up, which is 6:15.) My Momma came in my room right before she left for work and kindly said, "It's 6:30! Get your lazy butt out of bed or you are going to be late for softball!" I was so tired. Thankfully I didn't have to do much to get ready, and I was out of the house by 6:41. (Not a record, but pretty close.) For softball conditioning we did all kinds of sprints and agility exercises in the gym because it was raining outside. (I voted for running in the rain, but some girls where complaining about how they might mess up their hair or smear their make-up. Puh-lease. It is conditioning, not a flipping fashion show.) After conditioning, we went into the weight room, and us band people did a shortened workout so that we could get out of there in time for band camp at 9.

As I walked into the band room, I was quite disappointed. It already smelled like BO. Yuck. We started with sectionals. Sectionals really make me mad. Flutes go with the clarinets, but the clarinet section leaders just mess around the entire time. They won't even count off or clap off, which irritates me to no end. There are only two flutes this year, and my flute-mate was at a volleyball camp. So just like all of our July rehearsals, I took over the little sectional shin-dig. I was in the middle of a 12 count count-off when the door opened and Danielle came in! Danielle graduated this year, and she is amazing! Everyone always says that I am the blonde version of her. Anyway, we are great friends, and I was so happy to see her. I kept counting off as she walked by, and she petted the top of my head and said, "That's my girl!". She was definitely the senior that I looked up to the most last year. We spent sooo many hours together practicing choir music and preparing for All State. We even had an "Alto 2 females who are trying out for All-State" cookie stash in the desk in Poe's old office. Ms. Poe would let us go in there during class and practice All-State stuff because she knew that we knew our regular choir music well enough. She was our choir president this year, so she gave a speech at the end of the year music banquet. The way she gave her speech was pretty neat. The basic idea of it was to show how much we procrastinate, but it also recapped the entire year. I enjoyed it. Anyway, after the speech she came up to me and hugged me and said, "I wanted so much to include in my speech that the only reason the four of us made All-State was because of you, but I figured that would look kind of bad because you didn't make it." I laughed and then we were both sobbing. We both cried a lot throughout the year.

After sectionals we had lunch and then did circuits. I love doing circuits! It's so much fun to teach all of the little freshman all of the commands and calls and fundamentals and such. After that we ventured out into the rain to do more fundamental stuff. I had a pretty decent conversation with John about recent problems and such on the way down to the field. After field fundamentals we ventured into parade marching. We were practicing our ending chair step on the cement, which was quite difficult because the road was covered in water. After that we marched back to the field to do our drill down. I was doing quite well until Mr. Parde threw in the delayed "hut" after "Right Flank". It get's me every time. I didn't leave school until around 3:15, and frankly, I was ready to get out of there.

After supper, I discovered something not so good. I have Pink Eye. Yucky. It is a very uncomfortable feeling, it's disgusting. I hope the eye drops make it better soon. Looks like I will be wearing my "bug eye" glasses for a while. Wonderful.

Moving On, Not Letting Go

My grandparents took their house off of the market, they were not pleased with their real estate agent, and were getting frustrated. But last week they got a call from the real estate agent that they had fired. He said that he had a couple that was  really interested in their house and wanted to know if he could show it. They said yes, and after two showings, this couple made an offer on the house, and on Friday my grandparents and this couple came to an agreement. So that's it. The house is sold. The closing date is sometime in mid-October. We were on our way to the bridal shower of a girl who used to be our nanny when Momma told me this. At first I was VERY excited. I miss Grandma and Grandpa sooo much. It was so awesome to live so close to them, and I want them to be close to us again. Moving away from them was VERY difficult. Then Momma said something that really upset me. She said, "And now that they'll be out of Ogallala we can finally bring that chapter of our lives to a close. We really don't have any good reason to go back there as often as we do now." I was so upset, and then I said something very stupid and rude, I even tried to convince myself not to say it. So as tears and sobs were emitting, I practically yelled, "That's easy for you to say, you didn't have to leave the most amazing friends you have ever had behind." I regretted saying that the instant it came out of my mouth. I felt terrible. Those words tasted like vinegar as they came out of my mouth. I vented to her for the next half hour about how I feel like I am loosing my best friends. I only get to see them once every couple of months or so. Out of sight out of mind. It happens. This isn't the first time I've moved away from friends. Although, this is the first time that I have maintained contact and closeness with a group of friends post-moving. Last week I was able to spend a few days with some of them at All State Choir Camp at UNK. At the first meal I turned to Syd and said, "I've forgotten what it's like to be with all of you guys for more than a couple of hours at a time." It's true. I always feel a little out of the loop, a little like an outsider. And maybe it's because I am an outsider. I don't know. My family is ready to move on and forget that our little Ogallala Adventure even happened. I don't think I'm ready for that yet. Yes, it ended badly, yes it put us in a lot of struggles, yes it was a definite test of faith, but God had us move out there for a reason. I truly believe it. I don't know what's going to happen, I don't know when I will see my friends again. Mom says we will be making a lot of trips on the weekends out to help Grandma and Grandpa pack and to get the tractor and to clean out our last storage unit, but starting labor day weekend I have either a softball tournament or a marching competition on every weekend until State Marching Competition (which is October 26th), so I don't even know if I will get to go along. I knew this transition would happen eventually, but I didn't think it would happen so soon. It's amazing to me how I can plan things out in my head as to the way I want them to go, but God comes along and does His will. That's my pray and plea, that His will will be done through this entire situation, that I would have faith and turn my worries over to Him. As for right now, I will pursue my walk by faith.

"Therefore Comma"

When I was going into sixth grade, our school bought a new type of reading curriculum. Each of us had to go through a series of tests to see where we would be placed. They had three different levels for each grade, and some of the levels overlapped with grades above us and below us. My sixth grade class was split into three different reading groups. My tests went very well... except for one... Reading Out-loud. My score was terrible on this. For some reason, when I would read out-loud, I would mess up so many words. I would glance ahead to see what happens next, and then I would loose my place and get frustrated, this frustration would cause me to switch words around, drop them out, or add completely new words. As my frustration increased, it became more and more difficult for me to read. It was very embarrassing. I would always get called on to read because I was a "nerdy smart person", and I would always be so embarrassed that I couldn't read eloquently like the rest of the nerds. My teachers could never understand it. I was proficient in all other places except for this. If I was reading in my head, I could read books that were two or three years above my "level" and my scores on those tests were nearly perfect. But because of my inability to read out-loud fluently, I was put in the lowest level in my grade. In fact, when I was in sixth grade and Rudy was in fourth grade, we were taking the same reading class. He was ahead, and I was behind. It really frustrated me because if you were in the lowest level reading class, you had to stay in that level for Language Arts and Spelling as well. I hated sitting through those classes. It is so frustrating when you know the answer by heart and someone else doesn't get it at all so the teacher has to keep revisiting the subject. (If you have been around me enough, you know that I cannot say the words "therefore or however" without saying the word "comma" after it. This is because in my language class people would forget to write the comma, so when we were speaking out-loud my teacher would make us say the word "comma". Unfortunately, that stuck with me, and I can't seem to break that habit. It's not necessarily a bad habit, it is just annoying to other people.) I was so frustrated. The summer between sixth and seventh grade, I decided that I was not going to be in that lower level class, so I worked really hard on reading out-loud. I read everything out-loud: signs, books, magazines, the TV, anything and everything. (This is also another habit that I formed.) I had a lot of down time that summer after my four wheeler wreck that ended in a broken arm, so I would go to the library every other day to get new books. When we went to take the tests the first week of school my seventh grade year, I passed out of the lowest level! I was so happy. I still to this day, cringe a little when I am asked to read out-loud, I still don't feel as if I can read eloquently, but it is WAY better than it was when I was in elementary school. It's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

House/Job Relocation Update

About a month ago while I was at High School Camp in Missouri, my Momma got a call from a new hospital in Kearney. They had somehow heard about how she had set up the entire pharmacy under a director position for the Syracuse Hospital, and they wanted her to do the same for their new hospital. So that Thursday Momma called me and the first thing out of her mouth was, "What do you think about moving to Kearney?" I started crying. I didn't want to move again. That would have been my 3rd high school, and my 4th new school. She went to the interview the week after, and they offered her the job and more than what my parents make combined for a salary. So they started looking into options. If we were going to move to Kearney, Dad would have to stay with the Omaha Fire Department for five more years until he can retire. (Technically he "retired" from the department when we moved to Ogallala, but that is a long and confusing story.) So if we were to move to Kearney, Dad would have to get an apartment in Omaha, and stay in Omaha for one week and then in Kearney for another week. This really upset me. I hate when Dad's not around, we don't function properly without the entire family. I didn't want to go to a huge Kearney school, so Mom and I started looking into Private Schools in the area. Kearney Catholic was the only one we could find. We didn't even talk to Dad about that one... the answer would have been something like "Over my dead body." So Kearney Public it was... I looked into it, they don't even have a softball team! I was angry. I would have had to quit Dance Team and Student Council here in Syracuse, and I would have to leave my wonderful church. I really struggled with having faith during this whole situation. There were so many nights of crying myself to sleep. I didn't read my bible at all during that whole week. Finally one night I broke down completely I was so ashamed that I wasn't having faith and that I wasn't in the Word. I prayed and read like crazy the next two weeks. After Mom and Dad got back from Minnesota (they went to go pick up our new camper), they called a family meeting. (I was scared. The last time we had a family meeting was the night that the City Council decided to "eliminate the fire chief position". It was the night that Dad told us that there was a very slim chance that we would stay in Ogallala.) Anyway... Dad announced that they had decided that we were not going to move to Kearney. He said that it would put Mom in too much of a "family leader role", and that he didn't want to put any of us into a situation where our family wasn't being held together in a biblical way. They also announced that we received an offer on our house. However, the sale was contingent on the buyers selling their house. So we are waiting for that to happen! We have finally found a house that would work for our family. The main problem with this house is that it is in town. We are NOT town people. We are loud and obnoxious. There is a reason that we live way out in the country with our acreage surrounded by a thick tree line. This house is in the town of Unadilla, which is just five miles west of Syracuse. It is closer to church, closer to school, and closer to Omaha for Dad. So we are just waiting on the sale of our buyer's house.Through this whole thing I have learned that I need to make sure that I am turning all of my worries over to the Lord, and putting my complete faith in Him. I also need to make sure that I stay in the Word when things like this come up. Thankfully, I have wonderful people in my life who encourage me to do these things on a daily basis. I am very thankful for those amazing people.

Time Really Does Fly

Sometimes I sit and think about how simple things used to be. No major responsibilities, no major chores, no major decisions to make. It seems like these past years have flown by. It seems like just a couple days ago I was walking into Daycare at BryanLGH, or walking into kindergarten at Sterling, or fourth grade at Syracuse, or eight grade at Ogallala, or even tenth grade at Syracuse. If you think about it, our lives are filled with many "firsts" that are most of the time repeated. Maybe it's the repetition that makes these special days fly by. I'm going to a junior next year. A junior! I thought I would never make it to high school, and now I am going to be an upperclasswoman. I drive by myself. I'm getting ready to take my ACT. I am going to get a job soon. It seems like I am too young to be doing all of this stuff, when in reality, the time is at hand. I can remember my 13th birthday. I was expecting a drastic change. I was going from a child to a teenager, yet I never felt that instant change. Sometimes I feel like I should still be hiding under the teacher's desk in kindergarten class. College is only two years away. That is insane. I was really excited when I got my first letter from a college this winter, but they just kept coming and coming, and it started to upset me. There are so many decisions and choices to make. I don't feel like I am old enough to be looking into colleges and their different Nursing and Music programs. The more I look into what is to come and reflect on what has already happened, I just feel old. Rudy will be driving and in High School, and Izzy is going into Junior High. It's insane! I swear just yesterday Izzy rode her bike into an open tailgate (that's how we found out that she needed glasses...), and just yesterday Rudy was outside riding his little pedal tractor butt naked after escaping from Mom after bath time. Where has the time gone?

There is also another side to this. Our time here on this earth is very VERY short. Soon we will spend eternity with our awesome God. One thing that really gets on my nerves is when people ask "How's life?". I know it's a kind gesture and such, but it really annoys me. My usual response is, "Compared to an eternity in heaven with our Lord??? Short and dull." I usually get some strange looks from people, but hey, it's the truth. It's also a great way to introduce the gospel. Anyway, moral of this story: Life is short, use every possible second to share the gospel and bring praise and glory to our God.

Team Illg!

If you would have gone to the Triathlon in Ogallala yesterday, you would have seen this crazy team of family members walking around. This is starting to become a bit of a yearly family get together. It started with just Mom and Robin, now it has grown a little and is expected to grow more. Breaking down the teams a little more... 64: I ran, and Momma swam and biked. (She was going to do the whole thing, but her doctor said that her hip was too messed up to run. However, swimming and biking is actually good for her hip. She is expecting a hip replacement soon.) 58: My Momma's cousin Robin did the entire Triathlon! She did amazing. I call her Aunt Robin even though she technically isn't my aunt. 122- Darwyn biked. (He is Robin's Dad.) Jim swam. (He is my Mom's uncle.) Jackie ran. (She is married to Darwyn.)

Jackie and I get a long quite well. She is a lot like my Grandma. Saturday morning, we were looking at old pictures of my Grandma from when she was a teenager. They held them up to me and had me smile, meanwhile, every jaw in the room dropped. "Holy cow! She is a blonde version of Brenda! (Insert Illg laugh here.)" Ahh the Illg laugh... Friday night before Syd came over, all of us were sitting in the living room talking before we had to make supper. This happens every time all of us Illg women get together. People start yelling at each other across the room, making everyone else talk (and laugh) louder, and then we some how all end up doing the Illg laugh at the end. And then the entire process starts over again. It's just the way my family is. Another thing that always goes down when the Illgs get together is a big drinking fest. My Aunt Jackie walked in the house with a fairly large box full of alcoholic beverages. This annoys me to no end. After supper, we were sitting in the family room talking about plotting Grandma and Grandpa's 50th Anniversary next year. Sassy Uncle Jim practically yelled, "What about booze? Annastazia can provide that!" I rolled my eyes at the half drunk man, "That is illegal Uncle Jim, and you don't need anymore." As Jim, Judy, Jackie, and Darwyn left Grandma's house on Friday night to go to their hotel, I yelled at Uncle Jim, "Hey! No more alcohol for you tonight, Mister! You need to be able to swim in a straight line tomorrow morning." He thought this was funny and continued to stumble out the door.

The Triathlon was a lot of fun! I was able to talk to a lot of people that I had not seen in a long time, as well as joke around with my family about how bad we were all going to do. I waited until Mom was about half way through her bike ride to start getting ready to run, but I got distracted by talking to someone. I just happened to look over awhile later and see Mom coming around the corner, ready to enter the exchange zone. I ran over to the area and helped her rack her bike. She pinned the number on my shirt while I strapped on the ankle timer, and then I took off. I was feeling good for the first couple of blocks. It was quite enjoyable. I was trying to count the blocks to see how far I had gone, but I forgot how many city blocks made up a mile. It's easy to tell how far I have gone when I am running at home because each section is a mile, but city blocks have to be all complicated. I started getting a strange pain in my ankle. I couldn't figure out what it was, and then it popped into my head. A couple months ago, I was talking to Evan's Mom and she said that she did most of her half marathon training on gravel, and when she got to the actual race, her joints killed from running on the cement. I thought she was crazy. If anything, gravel would be more rough to run on. I was wrong. I finally made it to the turn around spot, but as I was looping around the street, I rolled my stupid ankle. I. Am. So. Clumsy. The run back was way worse. I only had to walk for one block, so I was happy about that. The last three blocks were the worst, but thankfully I finished.

In Sunday School today my friend Carlie looked at my arm and asked, "What happened???" I looked at my arm, "Oh, my number didn't quite wash off from the triathlon yesterday." She giggled, "I thought it was a bruise!"..... I rolled my eyes, "Yes, Carlie, because most bruises are in the shape of the number 64." And she calls me the dumb one...

By the way, I successfully made it through the entire weekend with out any of my friends hearing my Illg laugh. Mine isn't as bad as Jackie's or Mom's, but holy cow, it is annoying. Syd was so mad that she didn't get to hear it, I was relieved.

Car Problems... Yuck.

I swear all things that have to do with vehicles hate me and are out to get me and make me look stupid. This morning I got in my little jackwagon car around 6:30 to go to softball conditioning/weights/batting practice/band/dance team practice. I pushed in the clutch and put it into gear, but as I pulled forward, I heard and awkward scratchy/screech noise. At first I thought that I had run over the gutter pipe thing, but as I got out to see what it was, I was a little shocked. It was the dog's water bowl. It is a big metal one  about the size of my tire, and it was wedged up in there. It took me forever to get that thing out. I had to claw off tons and tons of clumps of mud and dirt to loosen it. This made me late, so I didn't get a full warm up in before I had to go run deathly relays for softball conditioning. After weights, I got in my car and drove to the other side of the school for band rehearsal. After rehearsal, I went to take my flute, piccolo, and "Flutist Friend" (or as Syd and I used to call it "Flutist Enemy") out to my car before Dance Team Rehearsal. My friend John was parked in front of me, so we were walking together. I asked him to hold all of my stuff while I got my keys out of my Roo. He said something snotty like, "As long as I don't have to hold your stupid fanny pack thing." Some people just don't understand the "Roo" trend. They are glorified fanny packs, but they are very practical. I love mine, and I use it all of the time. Anyway, so I couldn't find my keys in my Roo, then I look in my window. My keys were sitting right in front of the shifter where I had left them. I started freaking out. My mother had the other set of keys, and she was an hour away in Beatrice working at the hospital there. AAA wasn't an option because my parents haven't added me to the plan thingy yet. Thankfully my wonderful Grandmother was on her way into Syracuse to pick up Izzy from weights. Bless her heart, she drove all the way to Cortland (15 minutes north of Beatrice) to meet my mother to get my keys from her and then drove all the way back to Syracuse to give them to me before Dance Team Practice was over. I was so embarrassed.

Fireflies

Thursday was almost a perfect night. It wasn't too hot, but it was warm enough. It wasn't humid, but it wasn't bone dry. We anxiously awaited the sunset so that we could light off fireworks. Gregory had a nice bonfire ablaze, and we all had sticky marshmallow fingers and faces. I looked over towards our front yard and saw a bunch of fireflies flying around. It had been at least a year since I had gotten a jar out and chased after those awesome little creatures. I had a sudden urge to act like a complete child and run around trapping innocent bugs in a jar, so I did. I only managed to catch two before Daddy lit off the first firecracker. I asked Momma what I should name them. I was thinking about two deeply profound names, such as Frank and Bob. (That was sarcasm, by the way...), but she had something better in mind. "How about Hypoxia and Malnutrition? Because that is what they are going to die of quite soon if you don't get them out of that jar." I instantly fell in love with those names, and then proceeded to the house to stab the lid with a knife to help cure the hypoxia situation. To help fix the malnutrition problem, I put a couple blades of grass, some popcorn, and a marshmallow in the jar. About 5 minutes later, an ingenious thought popped into my head. (Also sarcasm...) I thought that Hypoxia and Malnutrition might get thirsty, so I dumped some of my lemonade into the bottom of the jar. Bad. Idea. I drowned Hypoxia and Malnutrition! They were dead! My Grandmother was laughing at me and my extreme disappointment. I eventually laughed along with her after I dumped out my jar of lemonade, marshmallow, grass, popcorn, and two dead fireflies. This is why I do not take care of any of our pets. End of story.

The 4th of July

It's a bit of a strange holiday. Most people don't see it as a "Religious Holiday" ( for lack of a better word, relationship trumps religion, I know... I know...), but it is in every way. On the 4th of July we celebrate our freedom from Great Britain, but who made that happen? We celebrate all of the freedoms and natural rights that we are given, but who allowed those to happen? We celebrate all of our country's leaders, but who gave those people their power? Certainly no human could do this, it was our wonderful God. We are blessed beyond measure to be able to freely worship and serve our God with out severe persecution. In some countries if you are caught praising God or carrying a bible, you could be thrown in prison, beaten, or even killed. It is always encouraging and a little convicting to think about this. Would I be brave enough to carry a bible and share the gospel in a country like this? I'd like to think the answer is yes, but I have never been in a situation like that. It would definitely be the ultimate test of faith. So, today as you grill out with your families, or go camping, or set off fireworks, or light huge bonfires with like six hay bails and two containers of gasoline (...Gregory...), keep in mind who provided you with this wonderful country, our abundant freedoms, and our leaders.