HAWAII!!!!!

OK, I will not even possibly be able to describe to you how beautiful it is there! I went snorkeling and parasailing. Oh yea, I competed there too! :) Our chorus was seeded to come in 27th out of 33 choruses, based on our regional scores. We placed 14th overall!!! We were so proud. Only 2 people too many to win the Harmony Achievement award that we won in Vegas 2006. This is the award that is given to the smaller choruses based on the # on stage and the points earned. We took only 73 singers (including our director), and placed higher than choruses a lot larger than we were. We knew we did VERY well when our director winked at us after we sang our ballad. It is hard to tell on stage how well you do because you cannot hear yourself. You just have to go with the "plan" and try to tell how well you are doing by the way it "feels". Our uptune was a HUGE SUCCESS!! We got lots of giggles and screams. At the end of our preformance, we were blessed with an immediate standing ovation. The lady helping us off the stage says that she has not seen the audience react that way to any other chorus that she had seen that day, and we sang 26th! We were so excited! There were a lot of wonderful choruses there. A majority of them had well over 100 members on stage. Anyway, we had a great competition and are very excited about our ranking. Our director has been having some health problems, and has decided that he needs to retire. This was his last International Competition with us. He will direct us at Regional in March and that will be his big bow out. It is extremely hard to see him go since he has directed our chorus for 47 years. We were just told last week that our Baritone section leader, Mary Rhea will be taking over. I was so excited to hear that because I think she is WONDERFUL and so very talented!
On another note, I personally had a great time in Hawaii. Like I mentioned before, I went parasailing (even though I don't like heights), and snorkeling. I wanted to learn how to surf while I was there, but I ran out of time and didn't want to spend the extra money! :) We saw Michael, Rebekah, and Kaylee while we were there. That is the Priebe's sister, husband, and niece. Rebekah and Kaylee showed us around the island the first 2 days that we were there and showed us all the "hot spots". It was a great trip. I'll try to see if Steve can upload them to our photo gallery so that you can see them all. We went to the Dole Plantation, USS Arizona Memorial, USS Oklahoma Memorial, USS Utah memorial (on a military base), Wikiki beach, North Shore, famouse Shaved Ice store, and lots of beautiful scenery. It was a great trip!