What should I do...

[Minuet888]

Rosanne are you a music teacher in Southern CA like me? I teach high school primarily choir (sometimes show choir)

 

[Rosanne]

I'm from NC and teach K-5 but have taught high school choir and orchestra for many years as well. Looking forward to returning to DisneyLand in August.

OP... I hope it has been going well What did you decide to do?

 

[Aust]

I had a similar situation for our September trip - we planned on it being a surprise, however then I found out my daughter's 3 day school camp started the day before we were leaving on our trip. Knowing her personality (neurotic would be one way to describe her!), we decided to let go of the surprise element and tell her, so she wasn't excited about going to camp and then missed out. I was a bit upset at losing the surprise but at least knew there wouldn't be any scenes or drama when she found out. So in our case honesty was the best policy - you'll know your daughter best and the best way to handle her.

 

[Avery's mom]

OP here...

After a lot of deliberation and with much of everyone's advice in mind (thank you all - ), we are going to tell her about the trip tonight.

I thought about how she would feel and that led me to my decision to tell her with 13 days to go, rather than wait until the day of departure. I know that if she practiced the part, then at the last minute wasn't there to perform, she would be up in arms about not being there. She is very particular about what the "right thing" is and would die of embarrassment if she thought she was letting her classmates down, or wasn't pulling her weight in class.

I'll let you all know how it goes!

 

[Avery's mom]

We had our Elf on the Shelf help us with the big reveal this morning

Avery came downstairs to see our elf playing in our "Santa's Village" and she had a note with her. The note gave her clues to her early Christmas present.....

So, she looked around the village and found our APs underneath some snow in the gazebo

She was bouncing up and down and was overjoyed with excitement! So, when we told her the dates of the trip, she didn't bat an eye. We reiterated that she would be missing the holiday concert if we went on Sunday the 16th. She said, "So What!!" I said, "You'll miss your solo". She said, "Mr. Johnson has other people that can do it. It happens when kids are sick or something. I'm sure we can get someone else to do it."

Then she proceeded to dance around the house getting ready for school. Those 20 minutes went something like this....

"And we can see the snow on Main Street.....and we can eat candy canes.....and we can ride Space Mountain....and we can see the holiday parade....."

But then when I told her that we had seats for the Candlelight Processional on our last night...the jumping up and down started again.....

So, THANK YOU to everyone for your input and advice - our reveal went very well and the solo will go to another happy student!

 

[larina]

My profile pic shows our awesome seats for the evening parade on Christmas day last year. We were so pleased, as they are actually seats.

Oh, have a ball!

 

[Aust]

So glad you had a good reaction, it sounds similar to our daughter's - instead of being upset about missing out on camp, she was jumping up and down so excited about going to Disneyland!