Trophy Festival

OK, I know what you are going to say - "All she ever does is write about violin on this blog . . ." Well, you may be right because here we go again, but bear with me. This past weekend Abbie participated in her first Trophy Festival. This is a neat little event that was originally established so that kids who don't do sports would be able to get a trophy for something. So, every participant pays $15 and is assigned a performance time during which they choose a piece to play for a judge that is not their usual teacher. After they play, they get feedback about things that they are doing well and things that they need to practice. Then, they get to pick out a trophy.

This year, the event was held at a large Mormon church, so there was a big gym that the kids could warm up in before their performance. Here is Abbie warming up with her current violin teacher. I think it was good for her to see lots of kids, most of which she did not know, but a few that she did. In general, she was a little nervous about performing for someone that she didn't know, but she handled it like a champ. Once we got into the performance room, she seemed totally chill and she did really well.

The woman that she played for was very nice and gave her some very detailed feedback, complementing her tone, her posture, and her attitude. I think that the hardest thing for Abbie was trying to decide what style trophy to choose because they had four or five different possibilities.

Aside from violin, Abbie has been enjoying the after school sports that are available to her. She currently does basketball on Mondays, Tae Kwon Do on Tuesdays, sports specific training on Wednesdays, tennis on Thursdays, and yoga on Fridays. I realize that this sounds like a lot and makes you think that I have turned into "one of those mothers." However, this is not at all as crazy as it sounds. All classes are held at her school from 3-4pm, and she actually likes it because the sports classes are more interesting to her than the aftercare activities. I love it because it means that I don't need to cart her anywhere. :)

And now for something completely different.

No blog post would be complete without an Abbie quote, and I am really on the hook to come up with something good so that you know that we think about more than just violin in our household. So here is a little story that I thought I had posted a long time ago, but I just found it in my unpublished drafts - we got into a conversation at dinner recently where I was telling Abbie that Mark Zuckerberg once decided to spend a year only eating animals that he had personally slaughtered. I was saying that I would probably just be a vegetarian if I had to slaughter my own animals. Without missing a beat, Abbie replied, "If it means crispy bacon, I'll gladly slaughter my own pig."

So, there you go! Its not just about violin. :)