Quitting Band

Artsy Journal Templates by Scrapping with Liz
All The Feels TLP Collab part 1
All The Feels TLP Collab part 2
All The Feels TLP Collab part 3
Story Seeds 3 by Sara Gleason

journaling says:
Just before Christmas this year, we decided that it was time for the boys to quit band. Cody had been saying he hated band for years, and there were several changes this year that really made it difficult to enjoy any part of it for any of us. Mr. Koester who did the beginner band was having health troubles and couldn’t do the Friday rehearsals anymore, so Mr. Stangl was doing half rehearsals for both bands. I felt bad for Mr. Koester, but I wasn’t happy that each band was getting shorted. Then I found out that Mr. Koester would bring Cody in for his private lesson and ask him if he knew his songs and if Cody would say yes, Mr. Koester would just send him back to class. I really wasn’t happy to learn that I was paying for lessons that they weren’t even getting. The final straw for me was at the Christmas concert when Wyatt (and Alec) were told they couldn’t play the 2nd of only two songs because they didn’t know their parts. How could they be sent back way early from their lessons, if they didn’t know their songs? That really put a sour taste in my mouth.

Then just before Christmas we found out that the after school practices were going to change so that Cody’s band would practice after school from 3:30 until 5:00 and then Wyatt’s band would practice from 5:00 until 6:00. I would spend my whole Friday evening running back and forth to ML. Ugh. I just didn’t want to do it and I especially didn’t want to do it when both the boys said they didn’t like band. I had to fight with them to practice at home and they’d complain the whole time about it. It was becoming very clear to me that it wasn’t a passion for either of them. I didn’t see the reason for us to spend so much money on lessons and spend SO much time driving back and forth when they didn’t even want to do it. So we decided to surprise them at Christmas. I wrote a card to each of the boys that said we decided they could quit band. They were both thrilled. Ha ha!

I still have mixed feeling about the whole thing, but I had to realize that just because I loved band so much through high school, doesn’t mean that they would. I think they would have liked it much more if they had it at school as part of their day, but that just wasn’t an option sadly. On to bigger and better things now.