X-tremely V: Longest Weekend Ever!

Do you ever have those kind of weekends?

The amount of days are the same, but it just felt so dragged out.

Friday evening I cut out of work a little early and headed north to watch my "little" cousin perform in her high school talent show.

We are 20 years apart, and live about an hour and half away from each other...so getting to her events over the years has never worked out :(

Until Friday night that is!

But before arriving at the school I met my dad and step mom for dinner :)

I seriously miss living in the Cleveland area!

Friday nights, especially during Lent are reserved for fish frys!

Lake Erie Perch to be exact!

SO GOOD!

I headed over to my cousin Hannah's high school where I met up with my mom and family to watch the show.

We all received a ballot book when we arrived to use throughout the show.

This night featured elementary acts, as well as the high school finalists.

Voting

I wasn't terribly happy with the voting process for the evening.

I mean, the judges votes count for 50% and the crowd vote is 50%.

That is fine, but here is where it gets hard/tricky.

You had 3 categories to vote - Stage Presence, Originality, and Overall Performance.

Each category you picked from 1-5.

But you had to complete each ballot by the end of each performance.

Making it hard to gage how well someone truly did compared to the others who still had to perform :/

Now that I got that out of the way...

First up with a few of the elementary school kids.

I couldn't get a good picture of this little cutie, but he was a tiny little thing in 4th grade.

He had a headset mic on and sang and danced to Million Reasons by Lady Gaga.

He was SO stinkin' cute!!!!

After a few performances from the little kids they moved onto some of the high schoolers.

This kid was amazing on the drums!

He had a whole light show going on as well!

There was some really talented kids!

A few played the guitar and sang, one did a freestyle dance, and a couple of boys did a High School Musical bit (strange if you ask me).

The final performance for the night was my cousin Hannah.

Not going to lie, I was nervous going into this event.

She has been participating in this school talent show since she was in 7th grade (she is now a senior).

And I should say, she has placed or won it every year!

She writes her own music and plays piano :)

This particular performance she had a video montage she put together that played on the projection screen while she sang.

Her song was called Hold On and it was beautiful!

I have only heard recordings of her performing and always thought she was great,
but hearing her in person was absolutely amazing!
Hannah is so talented!
And the story her song told had me crying through the entire performance.

I am really hoping I wasn't a jinx, because for some reason she didn't even place :(
I felt horrible!
But the more I thought about it over the rest of the weekend I came up with this...
Hannah wrote, sang, and played a song that was well above the others performed on Friday night.
You could tell that she is a senior and already has her mind and soul moving onto college and her future endeavors.
So at the end of the day does it really matter that she didn't win or place one time in all of her years?
Not at all :)
Beyond proud to call her my cousin!

After a long and late ride back home by myself, I was asleep by 2am.

Only to be up way too early on Saturday morning to take X to a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese :/

He had SO much fun, so it did make it worth it :)