Hope of America

Has anybody heard of Hope of America? I didn't know anything about it until last night...until we got there.

This is how everything played out. It all started on Monday. Jason got a call from his dad asking us to go to his little brother's performance Tuesday night at 7:30 and take pictures because he couldn't be there.

When Jason got of the phone this was our conversation:

Jason: "Can we go to Jacob's performance tomorrow at 7:30?"

Me: Sure, where it is?

Jason: The Marriot (this should have been my first clue it was huge, but I didn't pick up on it)

Me: What is he performing?

Jason: It's a school thing

Me: Okay sounds fun

So I'm thinking, it's just a small school performance and it's at the Marriot so there should be plenty of seats, no need to go super early. (I'm from a small 2A school where any performance we had was in our gym. So I hear school performance, and automatically think small.) We got there about 7:15ish and had to park forever away. Luckily for us we had some of Jason's family there that saved seats for us, or we would have been seatless.

It was a school performance all right, he just failed to mention that there are like 40 schools participating!

It was so cool!!!! I teared up a few times. The whole night was about America and the flag. In the beginning they had any of the kids and families in the schools that had a family member serving in the military walk across the floor waving flags and everybody was standing up and clapping. The kids performing were waving their own flags. It was so cool and super sweet. I have a cousin that is being deployed in May and I am so sad about it all, so this part made me cry. But it also made me so Proud to be an American! Standing and clapping with such a huge crowd!

So there was singing from the kids and then they had some dance numbers in between. One of the dance groups was Jeans Golden Girls. It's a group consisting of ladies over the age of 40 (I think). It was fun to watch and there is a 90 something year old lady that does the splits! My brother-in-law's mom performs in it, so it was fun to track her down...not hard since she was the only one with bright red hair.

The finale song was probably my favorite! They turned off the lights and all the kids had flashlights and there was a disco ball...really. And the song was super special.

After the program Jason and I waited in the parking lot for 25 minutes trying to get out. That was fun. Then we met up with his family at Arby's to visit and have a chocolate turnover (I have been craving one for months!). Jason's mom came up from St. George and his grandma was there along with a few cousins and his younger siblings. One of Jason's brothers is in the Marines and was in town for a few days before he heads to Japan for a year.. It was really sad to say goodbye to him

It was a good night!

Moral of the story: Hope of America is super cool! You should go...tonight. It's your last chance until next year. It's at the Marriot Center in Provo, starts and 7:30 and it is FREE! No excuses! Also there is kind of a pre-show that I heard was really cool so you should go early enough to see that!