Week 2, Day 3: Pageants, Pottery, and Pizza

Yo yo yo amazing Arts-x-Press parental units! Hope you all are doing well out there. This is the seasoned vets, James, Kit, and Jacob reporting to you live from the wonderful dorms of Vanguard University. Yesterday was a jam packed day full of fine arts and spicy beef for lunch (sooooo good). Let's get started so you can relive our magical adventure!

First off, after a bacon filled breakfast, your students hit the classrooms running by tapping into their creative juices in Creative Expression. We as counselors had to deal with them having high energy afterwards, so we know they got their creative juices flowing. After spending more time in their arts workshops, they already invested a good amount of energy into their day. But here at Arts-x-Press, we like to keep them busy every minute, so lunch seemed like a good call at the time. Lunch time was the time your young artists discovered a new passion for spicy beef and steamed rice. MMmm good! Plus, the ice cream machine that offers the "nectar of the University" was operational again. Let us tell you: 50 kids + staff with a sweet tooth = no bueno situation. I don't know who was more upset about the ice cream machine being broken before: the staff or the students. Ask your artists about that one later.

So after 30 minutes of healthy eating, ice cream munching, and kids asking "what are we doing next?", we jetted off to Laguna for the Festival of the Arts! After a memorable (and final) bus ride with bus songs for Jacob, we arrived at the Festival grounds. Now we can blog about this part all we want, but the young artists had SO MUCH fun at this point that they'll just have to tell you all about it. Once we got to the Festival, the awesome crew treated us to a backstage tour of the Pageant of the Masters! Afterwards, we got the chance to be creative and make our own art by scratch art, printmaking, and raku pottery. It's totally wicked!

After having tapped into our artistic sides (and after all the folks at the festival complimented the kids on how darn cute they are), we became (urban) wilderness explorers and trekked through Laguna to reach the amazing and beautiful Heisler Park (overlooking the beach too!). Once the kids plopped down and rested (they acted like they were so tired... they have great believable acting!), us counselors gave the young artists their room scores for room checks. I have a feeling these students will go home and have the sudden urge to keep their rooms clean (cross your fingers). Then the more than delicious pizza came for dinner (man do your kids love pizza!!). Following that, the counselors started engaging the students with their awesome new games.

We then headed to the Festival of the Arts where our lovely students were able to walk around to see the various masterpieces that were on display. Following that we headed to the highlight of the night, "The Pageant of the Masters". The show this year was awesome, make sure to  ask your student what their favorite art piece was. After the show we hopped on the bus after a very long day (you should have seen how fast your little ones went to sleep). When we got to Vanguard, it was kind of scary waking up your children on the bus when they're that tired, but we did!!! We got them their three minute showers and in there own comfortable bed.

Parents we hope to see you tomorrow at the parent presentation. See you there, and bring your cameras!

Sincerely and ever yours,
James, Jacob, and Kit

Over and out. Peace.

P.S. The picture to the right is not a picture of us amazing counselors just so you're not confused. As you can see, there are no guys in the picture. It's a lovely photo of instrumentalists, and it just looked like it fit nicely down here at the end. So just so we're clear: picture of instrumentalists- not James, Jacob, and Kit. Cool.