Winter Drama

It's been a busy winter balancing the practices of not just one, but TWO drama productions for Ella.  When the second show closed last weekend, the director pointed out that some of these kids were on their fourth play in less than a calendar year (Annie Get Your Gun, Singin' In the Rain, Women And War and Meet Me in St. Louis)!  We LOVE our school's drama program and feel excited that Ella could gain even more experience in  2 more drastically different dramas.

The long story is that after the huge success of Singin' In the Rain, about twice as many kids tried out for the winter drama, Meet Me in St. Louis, as what the director needed.  Not wanting to cut anyone or lose any interest or momentum, she found and cast a whole second show, Women And War, so everyone could have a part.  Meet Me in St. Louis was the headliner and was cast with mostly upperclassman, but it's the one Ella originally landed a part in.  Then, the director asked her later to help out with a small role in Women And War too.  

Women And War was SO cool!  It was a one act, monologue-style story, telling the life long affects of war on the not just the people who fight, but on the family members at home, the SOS girls, the nurses on the front lines, the telegraph operators, even the Donut Gals (which was the part Ella played).  Characters emotionally told of husbands, sons, and brothers dying, abuse they endured, limbs they lost or amputated, heartbreaking telegraphs they sent, etc.  I totally cried.  To add to the intimate and intense telling of the stories, all the audience seating was right up on stage with the characters, giving it a black box theater feel.

Ella and her good friend Ansley were the 2 Donut Gals.  They told of making and delivering coffee and donuts to the soldiers and they were the only ones who did not have a sad story to tell.

The cast of Women And War in real life (above) and in artistic form (below).

A few weeks later, it was time to perform the full length comedy Meet Me In St. Louis.  This play could not have been more different!  It was HILARIOUS!  It was about a family with 5 crazy kids who were told they had to move from their home in St. Louis to New York for their dad's job.  The kids met this news with rebellion and anarchy, doing things like derailing trolleys by tossing dummies on the track, biting the boss, slapping boys, throwing cats at people, or soaking them with water.  Ella played Mrs. Waughop, the irate, offended, and prim neighbor to this completely senseless family.  She'd often storm into the neighbors' house to lecture them about dousing her dress with flour or stomping through her flower gardens.  Even though this part could not have been more of a stretch for sweet, earnest Ella, she played it perfectly and got tons of laughs.

I thought it was so cool to watch her in two plays that evoked such strong emotion-- tears one weekend and roaring laughter a few weekends later!

Meet Me in St. Louis had TEN seniors take their final bow and kiss the stage goodbye.  Ella has loved learning from, laughing with, and becoming friends with these older role models.  We are all sad to lose such a huge group of major talent, but the upcoming freshman can bring it too!  The above picture is our director with the freshman.  She told Dave and I after one of the shows how proud she is to work with students who are such versatile actors, and many of them so young still!

And a friend picture to close.  Ella loved having her sweet group of buddies come cheer her on!  Though high school drama is now done for the year, life shows no signs of slowing down!  This month, Ella's other major extra curricular activity, Robotics, will be going to the 2 major competitions they've been preparing for since January.  And Delia's Aladdin cast list goes up tomorrow.  So, stay tuned for recaps of this year's equally exciting Acts 2 and 3! 

What Is A Legacy?

To use Lin-Manuel Miranda's words to answer the question posed in the title it's: "Planting seeds in a garden you may never see", it's "Writing notes at the beginning of a song, someone else will sing for me."  This line, along with about 200 other things, blew my socks off at the performance of Hamilton I got to see in San Francisco last night!

I'm newer to this musical.  In fact, I didn't know much about it until Tuesday of this week, when a friend from church said she had an extra ticket for me if I wanted to join a Girls' Night Out group.  Even though it meant scrambling to find rides and places to sleepover for my girls, since Dave is gone, how could I say no?!  Learning Hamilton has been my "job" this week.  We immersed ourselves in the music, researched the story, and watched interviews with the writer/composer; it has captured the hearts of us three VM girls.  I think a return trip The Orpheum will definitely be necessary!

This musical is a masterpiece!  It blends all different music styles to tell an exciting story of history with a dynamic and diverse cast.  It has layers of themes-- lyrical and musical.  It is so jam-packed with goodness, I continue to find fascinating new lines and reprises each time I listen to it.  And I've listened to it dozens of times now.  

It does not matter what show you are seeing, there is just nothing like live theater.  Those first few bars of music that get your heart pounding!   Clapping until your hands ache while you leap to your feet in ovation!  Our Friday night crowd was sold out.  Within the first minute of the show, the whole place was going nuts when Hamilton first steps on stage and says his name.  The energy was awesome.
 
*My favorite song was "In the Room Where it Happened".  I love the brilliant character development that happens here for Burr while he narrates an intriguing piece of Hamilton's story. 
*The actor playing George Washington was one of my favorites-- powerful and commanding.  He just gave me chills. 
*The action and line that made tears leap to my eyes and run down my face was the simple act of Eliza choosing to take Hamilton's hand after he had wronged and dishonored her.  "There's a grace too powerful to name.  Forgiveness.  Can you imagine?" 
*The King George character provides some of the best moments of the show.  It's so fun when he invites everyone in the crowd to sing along with his bratty little chorus, "Da da da dat da..."

We spent the whole ride home digesting the feast of words we had been fed!  It really is a musical unlike any other I know and I hope the opportunity to share it with Dave and the girls comes up before the traveling Broadway cast leaves our city at the end of May.

Hamilton gave me a history lesson, an awe-struck appreciation for Lin Manuel Miranda, a hip-hop beat in my step, a fabulous night out with some girlfriends...and a new favorite meme! ;)

Ella's First Formal

We found yet another thing to love about high school last weekend: FORMAL!  Ella had the best time getting dolled up and going to her school's Winter Formal with her sweet group of girlfriends!

And my sweet group of friends totally blessed us by sharing their skills and dresses for this fun night too!  Melinda, a church friend who did Ella's hair for the play, was kind enough to whip it up into some gorgeous braids and curls for formal.  Her two daughters, who were both former students of mine, were too cute dancing around Ella while we sat in their kitchen, telling her she "looked like a princess"! :)

Some of my wonderful teacher friends with college-aged daughters hooked us up with dresses also!  Ella tried on a total of 12 borrowed dresses!  We didn't step foot in a single store.  This sparkly, maroon one became a quick front runner, but we have several more dresses lined up in the closet now for future formals for both Ella and Delia!  SUCH a gift!!

The night of formal, Ella's group of friends met up at the fountain feature of a local park to be totally paparazzi-ed by their moms! ;)  Gotta capture this major milestone!  They were good sports.  

A few of the other girls in this friend group, who chose not to go to Formal, stopped by to see their friends.  It was a delight to just listen to the excited chatter and exuberant complements of these young ladies.  Ella cuddled up in bed next to me till 12:30 am telling me every detail of this super fun night.  The dinner was delicious, the time with friends was great, the dancing was so so fun, she even won a raffle prize!

Dave has been on a trip to Guatemala and missed seeing Ella this night.  So, I sent him this old picture of what our dress up days used to look like!  It does not seem that long ago that my little 4 year old was prancing around wearing tiaras, tulle dresses, and fairy wings.  But, instead of lamenting the passing of time, I'll cheer for the new experiences and memories my girls get to have and make in each exciting, new season of life! 

The Lord of Every Detail

Dave recently started a new sermon series on King Saul from 1 Samuel.  It's about what is means to call someone the Lord and King of you.  The series started with the story of how God providentially brought Saul and Samuel together by orchestrating random events (like some lost donkeys) to make their paths perfectly intersect.  

Then in the girls' group I lead for Delia's class, we read through the entire book of Esther and marveled again over how God controls even things like sleepless nights to bring about His plans.

Our God is the Lord of every detail.  Nothing is too small for Him to care about.  Nothing is outside of His control.  And sometimes He even makes the little things lead to big, huge, miraculous things!  This was a lesson I was blessed to see firsthand this month with the crazy losing and finding of my wedding ring diamond!

In 1998, Dave used his precious, hard-earned college dollars to buy me a beautiful oval diamond, which he gave me on a snowy bridge in Michigan the night he asked me to marry him.  It's priceless to me and my most favorite possession.  So, you can image my heartbreak when I looked down at my finger, while doing recess duty the Friday before Christmas Break, to see my empty ring prongs holding nothing by air.  It was a student pick-up time, so a few parents who learned of my loss were compassionate and amazing and jumped into a major search party of our whole preschool building with me.  One mom dug through my entire classroom garbage can and was ready to start ripping the pipes in our sink apart!  My coworkers were quick to help too.  It was a crazy day, one where I had literally been in every room of the building, so the search was wide and felt a bit hopeless.  How do you find a small diamond in a whole playground of woodchips?

I went home and tore sheets off beds, sifted though the silt of vacuum canisters, and searched every nook and cranny.  Then I just had a good cry about it.  I dug my mom's old wedding ring out of my jewelry box to make my left ring finger feel not-so-naked.  And I started to make peace with the reality that my diamond was gone.  A month went by.

Then one day, back at school, I got distracted by a conversation with a co-worker and didn't have quite as good of an eye on the kids as I normally do during their free play time.  They went wild and dumped every single tub of toys in my classroom out.  It took us a while to clean it all up, but after we did, I looked down and saw my diamond right in the middle of my classroom carpet winking up at me.  "Is that my diamond?!" I yelled in disbelief, while my two co-teachers started screaming, hugging, and jumping up and down with me.  We were a quite a sight for the students, I am sure!  I showed the kids my diamond and thanked them for making the huge mess that found it.  Funny stories from parents came back to me about how this story was retold in their homes that night!

We took my ring to the jeweler, who reset the whole thing and polished it up to a brand-new sparkle.  To give God further credit, we were delighted to realize that the day my ring was ready to be picked up was the exact date Dave had first slipped it on my finger 22 years ago!

It's a real ring-dinger of a story, huh?  I still can't stop admiring my "new" ring, smiling about its failed escape attempt, and thanking God for presiding over the fine points!

Christmas Vacation

Here's a Christmas Break highlight reel!  Generous presents, a visit with my sister, purple crabs, the sun setting over the Pacific, competitive golf, and strong skating were a few of the big things that made this break another fantastic one!  Little things, not pictured, included cashing in various gift cards for meals and activities, time with friends, and tons of game playing.

Thank you to every one of our thoughtful family members who once again sent such perfect presents to open!  

Ella got Uggs and Delia got a mini donut maker from Auntie Karen and family-- two of the favorite gifts this year.

 But, every gift was wonderful and has already been put to use.  Here we are realizing that the fitness tracking watch we gave Delia can take remote pictures with my phone!

 We had a fun fondue dinner on Christmas Eve.

Then, around 11:15 pm on Christmas Eve, we got a special visitor!  It wasn't Santa...it was Auntie Heather!  We were delighted to share Christmas and the first week of break with her!  She pulled this awesome Ivy blanket for Delia out of her sack of presents along with new roller blades for Ella.

One outing we took with Heather was to Half Moon Bay, where we strolled the beach, hiked the shoreline, explored the tide pools, and watched the sun set.

 This is sadly the last picture you will see of Ella because she was fighting a nasty virus the whole time Heather was here.  She was a trooper to join us on our outing when she was feeling so miserable, and did what she could to keep up, but ended up spending a good part of the day napping in the back of the car. :(

The tide pool system here is pretty amazing.  As the tide starts rolling out around 2:00, it just stretches wider and wider, revealing a whole new world of underwater life.  

We crossed the usuals off our tide pool wild life sighted list: star fish, anemones, urchins, hermit crabs, etc.  Then we found these HUGE, bright purple crabs to admire!  I had some fun playing with filters on the above picture to show just how vibrantly colored these new-to-us creature were.  We all worked up the nerve to pet it, even though it shook its giant claws at us menacingly, evoking much hilarious screaming.

 In Colorado, Heather led us to big horn sheep, elk, and moose.  In California we petted sticky anemones, prickly urchins, leathery star fish, and scary crabs.  If my sister and I are trying to one-up each other with cool wild life experiences native to our states, I'll just say, "Your move, Heather." ;)

This outing is best taken in the afternoon, to work with the lowering tide, so it also works perfectly to catch the sun set before we head back home.  Heather and I chatted about the coolest places we've ever caught a sun set while watching this one turn the sky pretty colors.  Her list is admittedly way cooler than mine, but this conversation proved we've both been pretty remarkably blessed with travel opportunities!

The girls and I gave Dave Top Golf for his birthday, so this was another fun outing we shared with Heather!  Top Golf is essentially a fancy driving range, which is completely computerized allowing for this neat competitive experience .  You rent a bay and then get an hour to play as many rounds as you can against each other, wacking golf balls into big targets.  Your computer shows your hit in replay and then awards you points.  The bay has heaters, couches, and a server who brings you food and drinks.

 I needed a little golf refresher since I haven't touched a club since before Ella was born.  I was far from winning, but didn't do terrible either, thanks to the many different ways you can earn points in this game.

 Delia gets nervous about trying new things and she loved it!  It was fun for all-- even Ella who still wasn't 100%.  Heather beat Dave by one point!

Even though my sister had to leave, we still enjoyed her generosity with her birthday present for Dave-- an ice skating outing for our whole family, which we used on New Years Day.  We try to skate once a year and I loooove watching my girls lace up and take right off on the ice.  They are becoming such strong skaters, my Midwestern heart swells with pride.  It does not seem that long ago that we were teaching them how to skate and coming home with all the aches and pains of keeping their heavy little bodies upright.  Yesterday there was only one fall!

 I also love that my 12 year old still likes to hold our hand while skating, even though she doesn't need to anymore.

It's been a great Christmas, a great break, and a great birthday for Dave!  Though Delia started the week taking her turn with Ella's virus, we are on the mend and celebrate all the fun things we got to try and new memories we got to make!