Dollywood Competition

In May, the combined fifth and sixth grade orchestras for the Robertsville and Jefferson Middle Schools woke up at the crack of dawn and loaded the buses to attend the Annual Dollywood Competition. 

 I love that this sweet girl usually lets me snap a few photos without complaining.

Schools from Tennessee and a few other states performed in Knoxville over a three day period.  Our school got to perform first thing on Saturday morning.

Both middle schools only got to practice together once the Wednesday before the competition.  I think they did a great job!

In fact, they did such a fabulous job that both the fifth graders and the sixth graders won first place!

Oh, I wasn't suppose to tell you that until the end!  Well, then I should probably tell you the last video is actually the first performance and introduces all the songs the orchestra plays.  I'm not sure how I got them out of order.

After the competition about 120 kids jammed the bathrooms to change clothes for some much deserved fun at Dollywood! 

Dollywood is sort of like Disney World with a country theme and shorter lines!

 This is the motley crew that I got to chaperone!  We had lots of fun!  The water rides were my favorite!  We did everything from riding the Ferris Wheel to making bears...

or pigs in some people's case.

Our first stop, however, was Thunderhead!  Which happens to be a wooden roller coaster.

Cardi was pretty excited! She had never ridden a roller coaster before and guess what...

neither have I. 

So, it was fun that we both got to experience it together for the first time. 

 Since there were 5 of us, and only 2 people per seat, I went a head of the girls. Some lucky woman who adored roller coasters (and whose husband refused to ride them) got to sit by me.

The girls thought the ride was pretty cool.  Me?  It kind of reminded me of childbirth.  The louder I screamed, the better I felt.

The girls waited in line over an hour to ride the Mystery Mine. Cardi and I sat around and talked. We decided, we're not much on rides that go really fast and upside down. Of course, I'm not really fond of theme parks and crowds in general.

But, I'm pretty fond of this girl! It's nice to have one on one time with each kid even if it requires riding a school bus with 60 screaming fifth graders, waiting in long lines, and straping myself into rickety contraptions that turn my stomach and I'm pretty sure are going to send me careening to my death at any moment.