Tall Dude

Tall Dude holding his cousin after a Christmas performance.

Warming up for a concert choir competition.

Tall Dude "officially" graduated from HS last year, but there were a couple things that we as parents thought that he still needed to work on. We decided that it was best if he stayed home one more year with the purpose of working on a few things and also to give him the opportunity to fine tune his goals for the future so that he wouldn't be wasting time in college taking classes that wouldn't be beneficial to him. This proved to be a good choice. He was able to take a class called Engineering as a Profession which is taught by a local businessman. The class is funded by the local public high school, so he is bused to the center to take the class. Tall Dude was thinking of taking business classes in college, but part of me wondered if he might like some engineering as well because he's great at math and building things. So this class was wonderful in that it confirmed to him that engineering is indeed a good fit for him now his plans are to combine engineering with business.

Another great benefit to taking one more year of HS classes was his opportunity to sing in choir. I directed a 12-voice ensemble a couple years ago and he loved it, but I was hoping he could get another chance to use his beautiful bass voice. He joined a 65-voice concert choir and also was selected to sing in the 16-voice a capella choir. This classes meets at 6:30 a.m. I wasn't sure how this would work out because the previous year homeschooling, we didn't see him up nearly that early. We have been thrilled to see him motivated to make it to choir on his own every morning. He has indeed put forth the effort and stepped up to the challenge. It's been a great year for him and I'm so proud.