Hope of America

Thursday night Joe had the opportunity to participate in Hope of America.  It is a patriotic program put on at BYU every year.  There were 7,000 5th graders involved in the program.  Joe's school was one of the schools that participated.  They have been working on the songs all year.  Thursday morning they went to BYU for a dress rehearsal.  They performed the songs at school that afternoon for an assembly,  and then Thursday night we all headed to BYU for the big production. 

 

 I was not sure what to expect,  but I don't think I was ready for just how big this thing was.  The human flag itself left you a little in awe.  Joe had to be there an hour and fifteen minutes early, so that gave us plenty of time to figure out where he was sitting.   It was a little like playing Where's Waldo.  We knew he had on a yellow shirt,  but so did a thousand or two other kids.  Luckily Joe had told us that he was by the blue part of the flag and I bought my binoculars.  It still took us a few minutes though. 

 Joe's class was sitting just above the top corner of the flag.  Joe is three rows down form the top and four kids in from the left.  The program was really good and the kids had so much fun being a part of it.  Some of my favorite moments were when the entire stadium did the wave during one of the songs.  The final song they turned out all of the lights and the kids did actions with flashlights. It was really cool.  I took a video,  but it is too big for me to download here. 

 .  I am grateful that Joe got to be a part of something like this.  Also did I mention that I love Joe's school teacher.  She is so great,  and as you can see by this picture a really good sport.  The kids love her. 

 The next day there was an article in the news paper with a huge full color photo.  Joe loved being able to see it, and he could even tell who he was in the photo. 

So now he is famous. ;)

A new thing I learned about Joe from our conversation on the ride home:  One of the things on Joe's bucket list is to body surf.  This was revealed when we were discussing the wave.