Band wife=Chaperone

Each Spring, Dustin takes his students on a long weekend trip. This is the first year that I've been able to go with him and I was so excited. I have to admit that I don't remember the bus being quite that uncomfortable though. (I guess I was in denial that the last time I was on a tour bus I was 8 years younger and had not had a child...)

We had a great time and were able to see a lot of really cool things. We left late Friday night, drove through the night to Memphis and spent the day seeing a lot of Elvis and Rock and Roll.

Graceland... not as big as what you would have thought.

The piano Elvis played the morning of the day he died.

Then we took the kids to Beale Street and we headed a few blocks down to see where the flooding had been. This is all the mud still caked on the sidewalk. The river is still really high on the Western side, but had obviously gone down where we were.

We got to take a tour of Sun Studio... where Elvis recorded his first song. It was also in the movie Walk the Line (there was a scene when Johnny Cash looks in and sees Elvis recording- yep, this was the place)

Then we toured the Gibson Guitar factory...

And the Rock n Soul museum.

Then we got to eat!

Then, we headed to Nashville to finally get some real sleep! It might have only been 6 hours, but they were good! Then up early and headed to Dollywood. We had a really good time there until about an hour and a half before we were set to leave. That is when I could have sworn that a hurricane hit. About half the kids made it to the exit... a few groups were stuck on the complete opposite side of the park when the monsoon struck. Thank goodness for cell phones- everyone was accounted for, just not with us. It wasn't too long before we were all on the bus and heading to the hotel before dinner.

We had a little health issue on the way to the hotel that resulted in Dustin spending the evening at the hospital with a student and her flying back to Roanoke, but she is doing better now. (It wasn't anything that was preventable- and we knew ahead of time that there was a slight possibility of it happening.)

The next morning we ended the trip the best possible way- an outlet mall! Dustin took off to do his thing and left the other 30-something female chaperone and myself to go where we wanted! The kids were excited because there was a Starbucks!
We got back early afternoon Monday and pretty much just crashed! I have to say that the kids were great! We had no problems out of any of them and got great compliments from hotel staff saying that it was very unusual for high schoolers to be so well behaved.

(By the way, Rachel and Zoe were at home with Dustin's parents who came up for the weekend. Thanks Grandma and Papa!)