Notes from Around Burnsland - November 3

Time to catch up with what has been going on with the Burns family lately!

Laura’s Program

Laura was in charge of the Senior Kindergarten through 6th Grade program at the Cordova Lower School campus of Harding Academy last week, as part of her new job this year as Performing Arts and Science Lab Coordinator. If you are wondering, “in charge” means that she wrote the program, selected the songs, came up with the choreography, made the props, and directed the whole thing. If that sounds like a lot of work, that is because it was. But everything went well and it was all great! The children sang, danced, and played musical instruments, and it was all really cool. She was relieved, and now she is starting to get to work on a similar program for the White Station campus. A teacher’s work is never done.

Trunk or Treat

A couple of days after the program was our annual Fall Festival at our church. It was a great time, with over 500 people in attendance, with lots of games, face painting, hot dogs, and of course candy. The whole thing wraps up with a Trunk or Treat, where the children go around and get candy from people who have decorated their trunks. Laura always handles the decorating, and in more recent years she has taken a liberal definition of “trunk,” such as a couple of years ago when she dressed up as Winnie the Pooh and had candy in a beehive in the back of our truck.

This year, she took that one step farther:

This time around, she decorated the horse trailer as a bear cave. The children (and any adults that wanted to go, too) would enter at the back where she is standing here, get some candy from the bucket by the bear, and the go out the front side door of the trailer. I kept calling it the bat cave instead of the bear cave, so she made some bats to hang from the ceiling, too, and you can see some of those here as well. On top of that, we had a couple of slowly-flashing lights to add to the cave atmosphere, because it was darker outside when the trunk-or-treaters went through than it was when I took this photo.

If you know us, you know we aren’t scary people at all, and we don’t like scary kinds of things, either. But several children (and a few adults) were somewhat reluctant to go through the cave, thinking that a bear was going to jump out and get them. But the only bear in there was the stuffed bear that Laura is holding in the photo here. Maybe that helped some younger (and older) people get over the “everything is scary at Halloween” feeling. Because we were just having fun.

Jaylin and the Honor Choir

But during the whole Fall Festival, I was a little distracted, checking my phone every so often. Earlier that day, Jaylin had tried out for the All-Southwest Tennessee Junior High Honor Choir, and I kept checking to see if the results had been posted. This was his first full year to be in the Chorus at school (last year he was in the Chorus for a quarter as part of the rotation program), but he figured he might as well try out. Besides, if he didn’t try out, he would have to attend the performance and write a reflection paper, so either way we would be going to the concert, from the sound of it.

Our friend Nick eventually arrived at the Fall Festival, and his family’s decorated car was right across from ours. Nick is also a local Choir director, and he had come straight from the audition site. He said that there had been some sort of issue with the scores, and that is why they hadn’t been posted yet, but he would get a notification when they were posted. I still kept checking as well, just in case he wasn’t checking his phone.

Finally, the results were up, and Jaylin made 3rd Chair in the 1st Bass section! That is really great for his first year, especially considering that he beat out some 9th graders as an 8th grader for his spot. We were all excited, and Jaylin even let out a “Whoop!” I think it is good for him to learn that he has other talents besides just sports.

Until next time…

You can probably guess that the next edition will have something about an Honor Choir concert in it, can’t you?  We will catch up with you again soon. Hope you are all well. Don’t forget to write.