Kaleb is in Uno Voce, which is an advanced choir at Forest Lake elementary school and they had the chance again to sing God Bless America for the Daytona 500. Last year was Kaleb's first chance but because of Covid they ended up having to pre-record their song so they weren't able to perform live. This year was a live performance, so that was really kind of exciting.
Kaleb went out with the FLEC bus at the crack-o-dawn and the rest of the family went out at around noon (sans Zach who didn't think spending a day out at the race would be fun)
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| In front of the AdventHealth injector |
The FLEC school had the band and the choir that went, so this was a nice group picture of the whole group that was there.
We ended up choosing the free parking a few miles away - we had to take a shuttle bus over to the Daytona center which was easy....but the thought occurred to us that LEAVING with a gazillion people at the end of the race may prove to be a long wait....more on that later in this update!
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| Walking in we stopped just to take a picture by one of the cars |
When the group sang, they were on the grass right in front of the pit row where the stadium was - and then they also put the group up on the jumbo TV screen so that all of the stands could see.
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| Kaleb and a few of his Uno Voce friends |
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| Looking at the group back towards the stands |
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| And then a close-up when they were singing! |
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| Kaleb's group on the main screen singing |
The school always has a block of seats for purchase that are up in the highest tier (so more affordable) but it is actually fairly nice as you get some breeze plus you can see the entire track, so the crashes on the far end of the track are still visible, so you get to watch the full race versus being down closer where you can't (but the pro for lower is that you feel more of the "whoosh" of the cars going by and can see the cars closer)
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| We had a nice view of the whole track so we could see all of the track |
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| After singing, Kaleb joined us at our seats |
After about half of the laps, the adults were ready to hit the road but Karis took Addison to go and get some French fries and the line was so long that it took another 75 laps, and at that point, Addison was enamored with all of the crashes (which there were a LOT) and she wanted to stay until the end. So knowing that we had parked off-site, we were a little nervous about getting stuck in a super long line, so we decided that we'd go down from our seats and just stand on the first floor by our exit
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| Last picture before heading out down to the lower levels |
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| We were able to watch the final laps right in front of pit row, so that was super exciting! There were 2-3 crashes right in the last 10 laps - so it was full of excitement for sure! |
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| We had our ear muffs on to save our hearing |
When the race finished, Karis and I agreed that he would grab Addison, Amy would grab Kaleb and we'd book it out as fast as possible to the shuttle back to the parking lot. We executed our plan, except Amy forgot to grab Kaleb's hand, which Karis quickly alerted Amy to grab Kaleb so thankfully we still kept our two children as we left 😂. We ran out to the shuttle and got on the third shuttle out, so we were super lucky as we got home by 8P and our friends the Js, who also parked in the free parking lot, didn't get to the parking lot quickly so had to wait for an hour to get to their car, so they didn't get home until almost 10P, so we were thankful that we raced out of there!
In other news for the week, Karis was a chaperone for Addison's school field trip to Legoland. The weather was lovely and they had a great time riding rides!
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| And getting her face painted! |
This Spring, Zachary has a large bird biology project due in which he has to take pictures of 30 different birds and create a summary of them, complete with their scientific name, common name and where he found them. It turned out to be a fun outing (3-4 outings) for the parents and grandparents - nice opportunity to spend time together even though the teen himself was not thrilled with having to go bird watching.
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| Quality time with grandma. Grandpa Lyle was ahead of us on the walk so wasn't in the picture |
And in other random pictures:
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| Addison enjoying some time looking through our annual picture book in the bean bag chair |
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| Our belated Christmas gift exchange with the Js and Cs |
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| A play date for Addison and Elin - dressing up in Kelli's old dresses - so cute! |
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| Uno Voce has a lot of spring concerts at local SDA churches - this was at Markham Woods |
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| Spray painting our new key holder for the laundry room! |
