At the Senior Band Concert, Daniel was awarded the John Philip Sousa Award for being the outstanding Senior band student. As such, he was given the conductor's baton and led his classmates in their final piece of music at the concert. He has loved his music experience in high school so much that he plans to minor in music at BYU.
At the final Choir Concert each year the seniors are given the opportunity to perform solo. Anthony and Conner (senior choir students) invited Dalin and Daniel (senior choir wannabes) to assist them in a "boy band" concert. They want everyone to know that they really do like girls. You can see them on youtube by doing a search with the words "vhs boy band choir", or you can just click on the top left corner of my blog. It really is worth a look. He made me so proud!
While you are on youtube take a listen to Daniel performing at the State Solo Festival. He did a fantastic job. I never realized that a trombone could sound so beautiful. He was disqualified on a technicality--unknown to all of us, he needed to present the judges with a letter from the publisher to assure them that the music was out of print. If we had known that, he would have won third at the state contest.
Daniel played men's doubles at the district tennis tournament. He and his partner, Spencer had to be "rushed" from Caldwell to downtown Boise in heavy traffic after they both completed their four hour Statistics AP exam. They then had to play two matches. They won their first but were eliminated from the tournament with their loss in the second match.
Then there was Prom. Daniel took one of his best friends to prom and had a great time. Since they went as friends there wasn't all of the pressure that sometimes accompanies these big events.
Graduation was this past Saturday. Daniel ended the year at #4 in his class and with a GPA well above 4.0. He graduated with 19 college credits and with his scores on his ACT won't have to take many of the Freshman level classes. The Air Force awarded him a certificate as the Top Science Student (his doubles partner was given the Air Force Top Math student award). Daniel loves learning and graduated #4 in part because of the number of classes that he took (it diluted his AP credit GPA). He will be attending BYU this fall for a semester before leaving on his mission.
One of the most exciting days at our house recently happened to be Senior Skip Day. It was also the first day to sign up for housing on campus at BYU. Daniel and 4 friends, plus one of the friends cousins, all want to room together. Derek's mom called down to BYU housing and asked what the possibility was that these 6 young men would end up rooming together and she was told that it would be impossible. So --- bring on the challenge! They swarmed around all the available computers in our house and following an opening prayer and about an hour of fidgeting, whooping, hugging, yelling, typing, phoning, worrying, and stressing they all ended up rooming together this coming fall. Look out BYU here they come!
I really am going to miss all the excitement.
