What a weekend!

It was a banner weekend for me!! Aside from the kids, nothing makes me happier than to compete in my chorus' regional competition every year! For those who don't know, I sing with a small local Sweet Adelines chorus, and though we are small, our region is huge! One of the biggest regions in the entire Sweet Adeline organization which is worldwide and includes nearly 30,000 members! Our region includes approximately 1,500 women and every year we all meet up in Syracuse, NY to compete against one another. This year, there were 22 competing choruses, 13 of those are small choruses in our division. We had 21 chorus members on stage, one of the smallest choruses in our region. (Our largest chorus has 140!) And despite our small size, we have been told we have a mighty sound and proved to everyone that even a small chorus can do great things! Our chorus took FIRST PLACE in our size category, Division A!!! Perhaps even more importantly, we also took home the coveted Most Improved Chorus award! The latter is perhaps more significant, especially since most choruses found that their scores had dropped from last year...but not ours! We went up by 67 points! That's HUGE!! That signifies that we have worked VERY hard over the last year and blew our competition out of the water! We were, needless to say, exceedingly happy! Below are pictures from this past weekend in Syracuse. The 3 smiling ladies in the picture below are Leah, Cate and Laura standing on the steps of what I think is City Hall, but not sure about which building it really is. They are getting ready for what we call the "Mass Sing". That's when a very large number of women from different choruses all get together to sing together. The regional team picks songs and sends the same ones out to all the regional choruses so that whenever the choruses come together for events, such as our regional competition, we'll have songs that everyone knows and we can all sing together. It's amazing to sing with SO many women!!


Here's a partial view of all the ladies who showed up to sing. At the end of this post, I have added a video from the mass sing.

Here are Jennie and Lauri showing off their new bling! Those beaming smiles were on every member of our chorus for the entire night!

Michelle and Michele!

One of our directors, Donna (on left) with Clara and Cate.

These are Donna's daughters, Laura and Leah. Our youngest members, Laura is 12 and Leah is 15.

Pat, her daughter Diane and Michele (yes, we have 3 of them, and it does get confusing!)

Roberta with Judy behind her.

After our celebration dinner, we all head back to our hotel to lounge in our hospitality room.

Our other director, Genine, reads aloud the judges' comments.

Three of the funniest cut-ups in our chorus, Michele, Diane and Cate get silly.

One of our chorus' quartets. Diane, Genine, Cate and Judy.

Some impromptu quarteting...Leah, Michelle, Roberta and Lauri.

Lauri, Rebecca, Michele and Michelle.

Our hard-earned awards!

First place!!!! :-D

The icing on an already perfect weekend was the surprise I got when I arrived home yesterday to find this! My dad went out last week and bought some new patio furniture and a gazebo for the yard. We don't have a patio, so I just thought we'd pick a spot and set up the gazebo on the grass. After much discussion, the boys agreed to pour a cement pad for it. Not very pretty, but functional nonetheless. While I was away, they nixed the cement idea and instead installed some pretty pavers! I've been wanting a patio made of pavers for a long time...and now I have one! Here, my dad and Dean finish up the rows.

Here's the gazebo (minus the canvas cover and bug screen).

Just some of the 440 pavers that went into the patio.

Tamping in some sand and water.

This was just yesterday, so it is not quite finished just yet. We still need to add more sand, bolt the gazebo down, add the furniture and landscape around the edges of the patio to get some grass growing again.

As promised, here is the video of our regional mass sing.

Today's Quote:

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. ~Eleanor Roosevelt