Many many years ago I took groups of students on trips to Europe with an organization called People to People. It was a wonderful experience and I really hope my kids have the chance to go on one of these trips when they are in high school. I took both high school and middle school groups and those middle school kids would have been just as thrilled (if not more) in Busch Gardens as they were at the Eiffel Tower or the Coliseum in Rome.  Seriously, the year I took middle school kids to the British Isles, a large group of them, against our (the leaders) advice spent (and by spent I mean wasted) most of their money on M&M piggy banks at the duty free shop at JFK Airport before we had even left the US. They had to lug those ridiculous banks all over the England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Send your high school kids, let your middle school kids wait.

Anyway, one of the most memorable parts of the trips was the theme song. Each year our European leaders, usually college students, would pick a theme song, make up a little dance the kids could do in their seats on the bus, and teach it to us all. Every morning we would sing it on the bus, and it really did get everyone going. One year we did ‘Reach’ by S Club 7, another year it was ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’. It was cute at the time, but it is incredible to me how much those songs remind me of those trips now. Such wonderful associations whenever I hear the songs come on. I was telling the kids about it a while back, and they thought it was a cute idea. When we started to talk about what we wanted to fit in this summer I decided we should pick a theme song. Nothing came to mind immediately, but a few days later we were playing music from my iPhone and Colbie Caillat’s song ‘Brighter Than the Sun’ came on and we knew immediately we had found our song. We play it every morning, and it does make the kids very happy. It is so much fun to see how excited the kids get if it randomly comes on the radio in the car or if we hear it when we are out in a store.

William has really enjoyed the theme song concept and has been having fun listening to the lyrics of the songs on Radio Disney and my iPhone and trying to figure out how they would apply to us or others. When we were looking at the weather at the end of June/ beginning of July and saw that we were in for an extended heat wave, William decided we needed to add a second theme song for those super super hot days, and he (of course) knew just the song, Disney XD’s Adam Hicks feat. Chris Brouchu “We Burnin’ Up”