Band & Music for Kids

My youngest, the only one left not old enough for band in school, is trying to decide what she wants to plan in band already. Love it! She is trying to decide between flute, drums and sax. We have flutes (my other two girls play), we have snare drums for class (my son is the percussionist) and a whole drum set at home, but we don't have sax stuff - saxophone, case, music, excellent saxophone strap.

She still has a year left to decide so no rush from us. I'm kind of hoping she picks something we already own but we'll just go with whatever she decides. If she won't enjoy it, it'll be a waste of time anyway.

We think music is important and ask that each kid takes one year in fifth grade. If they don't like it, they don't have to continue but all three have continued.

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When do you take your tree down?

Anybody else ready to take the tree down? I am ALWAYS ready to take it down as soon as Christmas is over to get it out of my living room and make space (we're cramped here with six of us). The family wants it left up until after New Year's. Bah humbug! LOL

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Band Geek Stuff

We had a kid in my daughter's grade this year decide he wanted to play trombone. He'd not played it before. All of a sudden, there's a trombone player in the high school marching band. It looks hard to play. How did he do that? Now if he'd stood up in the stands with a colored pbone trombone,that would have been even better!  Get one in the school colors.

My freshman son was the only other snare in marching band this year, other than a high school senior. The other kids in the grades in between couldn't keep up with my kid so he got the other snare spot. How cool is that?

I love watching my two kids perform in the marching band, but I sure am glad not to have to sit out in the cold or rain until next year!

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Earn Money Online Shopping

I was NOT successful with my Cyber Monday shopping. I spent several hours going to different sites to compare prices. I went to my Shop at Home account to see what percentage of money I'd earn back on each purchase (last year, I received a check after Christmas for more than $100 after all the online shopping I did).

I finally placed two orders with Wal-Mart for a lot of stuff (with 7.5% earnings back through Shop at Home of my purchases) and went about the rest of my day, only to see in my email later that Wal-Mart canceled both of my orders. Why? No clue. I went back to try to reorder and found several items that I had wanted sold out but I tried to place another order with what was left in stock with a bank card (first time was with paypal).  Same thing. It wouldn't process the payment.

I'm guessing Walmart had a problem with processing payments on Cyber Monday. My entire morning yesterday was wasted.  My 7.5% cash back through Shop at Home gone. I'm sure they're still offering percentage back today but it probably won't be as high as 7.5%. That's a great cash back bonus to shopping that I'd be doing anyway.

If you are interested in signing up with Shop at Home, this is what you do:

1. Sign up here.
2. Once you get signed up, you enter the store you want to purchase from in their search engine. 
3. They will come back with the percentage back offered and any promo codes/sales that are going on now. 
4. You click the shop or activate tab and then go shop!  

What this does now is give a trackback so any purchase you make, Shop at Home will know and put that percentage of your purchase in your account. Once you reach $20, they send it to you.

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