2011: The year in review

It is so hard to believe that 2011 has already up and gone. It is January 2nd, 2012, and I decided to do a review of my 2011 for all my blog readers. 2011 brought many smiles, laughs, and, unfortunately many tears. I lost my Uncle Dan Steinkamp to cancer after many hard years of fighting, and a former classmate Alex Hermstad also passed away after a long medical fight. I think about Uncle Dan and Alex everyday; I have a picture of my Uncle Dan and Aunt Marilyn on my desk, and I have my "Alex's Army" bracelet in my top desk drawer. Whenever I had a bad day last year, I just looked at those things and knew that Alex and my Uncle Dan were watching over me, and I know that they will continue to watch over me.

Although I had my share of sadness, there were also many happy moments. I made All State for the 2nd year in the row, and had the prestigious honor of sitting 4th chair in the Iowa All State orchestra. I also made University of Iowa honor band last year, and sat 2nd chair with some pretty stiff competition. I was also accepted to Buena Vista University here in Storm Lake, and received one of the top three academic scholarship awards. I ultimately decided that my mom was right after all these years that music would become my career (A small sidebar: My mom always said that music would somehow end up being my career, and I always called her bluff, because I was going to be an English teacher. Well, I enjoyed a nice helping of crow after I decided that I wanted to major in instrumental music education; but I digress...). I survived my first semester of my senior year in high school; got A's on all my finals, and didn't go crazy. Looking back, I finally realize that music is essentially my life, and I honestly wouldn't want to have it any other way. 

Perhaps one of the most exciting things that happened in 2011 was  that my Aunt Fran and Uncle Bern moved back to Storm Lake. It's kind of a crazy story. We were in Cherokee visiting my Grandma Helen at the nursing home, and my Uncle Bern got a call from a 712 area code. After he took the call, him and my aunt had to leave all of a sudden. We just assumed that they wanted to get home since they lived in State Center at the time. The next night, the phone rings about 7:30. My dad starts screaming "Oh my God" and "No way." My mom, sister, and I ran to the living room, thinking that something bad had happened, and he goes "Fran and Bern are moving back to Storm Lake." I was really shocked at first, but my parents weren't. My Aunt and Uncle lived here before I was born, and Bernie Pro always said he would retire on Storm Lake, and they did. It's been really awesome having relatives in town. None of my relatives had ever really got to see me perform before, so it was really cool that they were able to come to one of my concerts and to a basketball game to see the pep band play. I've also gotten to spend a lot more time with my other relatives at their house. We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas there, and it was the first time that I can remember being away from home on a holiday. I was a little apprehensive at first because it wasn't "our traditions" but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

So many things are going  to happen in 2012; mainly my last semester of high school and my first semester of college. Lord knows I'm apprehensive about the 2nd one, but I'm confident that I will be able to get through it just like I got  through the year 2011.