Piano Festival

Hailey had an opportunity to do something a little different today. Her piano teacher had given all her students a chance to sign up to play in a local festival. I have a hard time calling it a festival because to me that usually means a party and such but this wasn't like that. It isn't really a competition either, it is more of an opportunity for a pianist to get to play in front of a few judges and see where they are at. They have a scoring system and the kids can eventually earn something called a "Gold Cup". But I believe it takes about 50 points to get a cup and each judging can allot you anywhere from 1-5 points.
Hailey in this picture is practicing for the festival before we leave home.

The place where the festival was at was interesting. It was held in a private School of the Arts that is located in the town of Eagle (about 15 minutes from where we live). The room we waited in was neat! The walls were all painted to look like red brick with some graffiti or behind this one piano they actually had curtains painted that looked very real. Here is one of the lunch tables. Tyler liked these so we took a few pictures of them.

This is us patiently waiting. I was VERY BUMMED to find out that you couldn't sit in and watch. The kids were brought to a separate, private room and played only for the judges. Do they really think that me in the room taking a few hundred pictures would have been distracting??? I spent most of the time Hailey was gone chatting with her piano teacher, Andrea. She is a very nice lady and lives right up the street.

Kurt and Tyler are patiently waiting too!

This is a picture taken with Hailey and her piano teacher Andrea right after her turn! What a look of relief was on her face! She was so serious and quiet before hand I felt sad for her. But, she survived. She felt like she did fairly well and said out of 1-5 she would have given herself a 3. I was happy she had the chance to do this.

Of course I took the opportunity to use this as a small photo session! This wasn't the piano Hailey had to test on but it was sitting in the lunch area we were waiting in and thought it was a nice prop!

Made Tyler pose too! He was having trouble sitting still. I wanted a smile out of him but his facial expressions changed so much that this is what I ended up getting by the time it flashed!

I wanted to take another one with a smile but a 6 year old has his limits on cooperation and the pouting and chair slinking started! Hayden was spending the night at Jonathan's so I couldn't get one with him and the piano!

Kurt was being a stinker too! He wasn't cooperating too much with my picture taking either. I informed him that I haven't been able to really do anything on the blog just about him and he seemed fine with that. I will have to step up on catching him doing things!

I realized something too that a "blogger" is probably tagged as the "over-achiever Mom". I was really one of the only people that was taking pictures in the waiting room (Andrea did take one of her two children in front of the piano). I feel like I should wear a button or shirt that says "Don't mind me, I'm a blogaholic"!

I am really impressed with Hailey because she is currently playing two instruments! She plays violin in the orchestra at her school and piano privately. I think I would be too overwhelmed to do two, actually, even one! She really has her father in her with her interest in music! To top it all off she has excellent grades too! We are so happy for/with her - what a smart kid! You go girl!