Making History

Since the blog is my own scrapbook, I thought that I wanted to record some of the surreal facts we've been living with for the past 3 weeks.

On Thursday morning, March 12, I was teaching when my phone blew up with texts that Ella's Robotics team was headed home 3 days early after their big Central Valley Regional competition, that they had arrived at just the night before, was cancelled.  This was the first that COVID-19 touched us personally and it was a major blow.  For us, it was kind of the first domino.

The next day, our church girls group was slated to head to the hills for our annual camp for the weekend.  All the area pastors and club coordinators met to discuss cancelling and decided to go ahead with it, as long as extreme safety measures were taken.  Our coordinator, Erin, carried a tub of Chlorox wipes around the entire weekend. We laughed a lot about the absurdity of it all.  We shared face-to-face fellowship and worship up at camp-- something that would end up being a major gift, as the life we returned to was quite altered.  It was up at camp where we learned school was being cancelled the following Monday for two weeks.  We comforted a lot of emotional girls.

Our church tried to run its first live streamed service the Sunday we were up at camp.  It remained open for congregation members to come, but they were encouraged not to. All children's ministries, greeting times, and fellowship were cancelled.  My whole newsfeed that Sunday was full of people posting about the novelty of attending church at home.  

I attended a meeting at school the next Monday for all the staff, where our questions were answered and where plans started getting laid for the possibility of this all lasting more than 2 weeks.  It would be the last time I saw my co-workers.  Though many of them I still talk to every day.

School's closing did last more than 2 weeks.  And over the course of those 2 weeks, our world changed.  We were told to "social distance", a term never used before that has become a major part of our lexicon.  Stores let in just a few people at time, creating long lines outside the doors.  Signs reminded us to stay 6 feet away from each other.

Non-essential stores and businesses were required to close.  My friend who runs our local donut shop expressed fear that her shop was her only income.  Another friend, who runs our local home goods store, is staying alive by taking online orders and driving to people's houses to drop them on doorstops.

We made a crazy "Corona Fun" to-do list for our weeks off school, but quickly had to disregard it as parks, trails, beaches, and zoos locked up.

Concerts, tours, plays, and all sporting events were cancelled.  No Hamilton in San Francisco for the VMs to enjoy (Ella's early birthday present and our big Spring Break plans).

My friend texted to cancel the wedding shower she was throwing for her future daughter-in-law.  We're praying the wedding can still happen this summer.  Another friend is burying her father without a funeral, and without even being there because she cannot travel out of state.

Our church has moved 100% online.  All services are pre-recorded on Friday and air on Sunday. All Council and youth group meetings now happen over Zoom.  Dave hosts a live prayer meeting each Wednesday.  He's trying hard to figure out how to creatively lead a Good Friday Communion Service.  Our far away families are able to join us for church each Sunday for the first time ever.

We were first told no gatherings of 500 or more, then it switched to 50, then 10, it is now 5 or more.

We aren't supposed to socialize with anyone outside of our homes.  A sweet friend stopped by to drop off a gift of fruit and meat for us yesterday, how I longed to visit with her.  Instead we had a quick conversation, separated by a ridiculous amount of space-- me in my door frame, her on my lawn.

There is a shortage of masks, gowns, and gloves for our front-line workers.  There is a shortage of ventilators for the critically ill.  My sister, who works in a private surgery center, but who has ICU and ER experience, is wrestling with if she should jump in and help.  I'm reading and hearing the harrowing tales of our nurses and I'm honestly terrified for her to put herself in danger.

Panic buying sets in and we have no toilet paper, no disinfecting supplies, no paper towels, no hand sanitizer, no flour, no bread, or other dry/canned food.  Shelves are eerily bare.  Target.com has been a lifesaver delivering everything from guinea pig food to laundry detergent right to our door (and some fun stuff too-- like purple hair dye, because why not?)

My social media is full of funny memes, trying to keep the scary situation light.  We mourn and pray for those with deep losses-- friends whose parents tested positive, or whose parents they can no longer see for their own safety; friends who are let go from their work; friends going through chemo with compromised immune systems; friends moving and being robbed of closure; impoverished children without school meals; dysfunctional families trapped under the same roof with no escape; the list is ever growing.  But, we have found plenty to laugh about too in these strange days, our human way to not be crushed under the immense burden of this.

Every day my kids do school from home.  They log onto their laptops around 8:30, Delia at the desk in the study, Ella at the desk in her room.  Distance learning has been pretty positive for them.  Their teachers send a devotion to start each day with.  They keep in touch with their friends.  Ella actually said, "I might be learning more this way, Mom!"  Being highly self-motivated, she was kind of built for home school.  Delia's dance teacher wins my undying appreciation for leading dance classes on Zoom.  The kids roller blade and walk the dog and do yard work for PE credit.  My friends who teach are struggling to balance homeschooling their own kids with re-imagining and reinventing all their lesson plans for a completely new platform each week.  It's SO much, with such a steep learning curve.  Nurses and teachers will be our heroes when all this is over.

I miss my own students like crazy.  I popped into my classroom to pick up some stuff and saw my last lesson on the white board, the pieces I'd prepped for my projects all laid out on the counter, and my calendar frozen on March 13.  A deep wave of sadness hit me.  I grieve all the fun plans I am not able to teach right now.  I started a Facebook Messenger group for the moms of my students and send them videos of Bible stories and devotions.  I pray with them. I email at-home modifications of my lesson plans each week.  Every day our administrator posts a video on the school's FB page of one of our teachers reading or singing.  Every day, I hear from my kids in the form of videos or pictures their families send of them learning at home.  This delights me.

Our world continues to groan, but respond in cool ways too.  Manufacturers, distilleries, and other businesses switch their lines to help make visors, masks, hand sanitizer and PPE.  The government closes the border to all non-essential travel.  Stadiums and recreation facilities open up for the overflow of Covid-19 patients in New York.  Press conferences are held daily.  City streets and roads are deserted.  People are wearing masks and gloves in public.  Essential service workers are terrified to go to work.  Medical field workers are afraid to go home to their families.  There are 1,000,000 applications for Employment Insurance as people go without work.

This is our reality right now.  It's worth recording because it's history.  We know there are many ways the world will never be the same.  But, we continue to put our trust in the Lord and choose faith over fear.

Snapshots of Quarantine

Like the rest of the world, we have been sheltering in place here in the VM House.  While there is much I can say about all the feelings that come with this, I think I will mostly let the pictures I've been taking for the past 2 weeks do the talking.  Today the girls officially begin their distance learning and one of Delia's assignments is to create a Power Point about her personal experience throughout this historic time.  She asked me to write this post so she could grab some of my pictures. :)

 We started with a very ambitious Corona-virus to-do list, but as the days stretched longer and we got lazier, we paired it down to these 7 things, and, in some ways, this alone sums up our experience pretty perfectly!

 There has been much sleeping and not as much showering or regular clothes wearing.

  I have loved reading my all time favorite YA book aloud with Delia (and Ivy!).

 Delia continues to practice her lines and choreography for Aladdin (she did get a major part!), with the hope that somehow the show will go on.

We each take turns picking what board game we'll play each night.  If you've ever played Pandemic, you will find this as hilarious as we did!

 Watch for Ella and Delia's Masterclass in Fort Making-- coming soon!  ;) This one was so cool, I let them keep it up for several days...and even sleep in it.

Ivy is in heaven!  We walk her ALL the time now.  The girls skate every single day.

We try to support our town's small businesses.  We've been making lots of visits to our local donut shop.  Above, some sweet encouragement from our town's cute home goods store!

I'm part of the 8 person team running our online church services each Sunday.  It's very strange to see Dave preach to an empty sanctuary, but we're thankful for the technology that keeps us connected and the Lord's promise that "where two or three gather in my name, I am there."

Everything ended up being fine, but at the beginning of all this, I got some irregular test results back from a routine visit and had to go in ASAP for follow up.  This was possibly my most unsettling experience thus far-- a long line out the hospital doors to be screened and a totally empty, normally bustling, radiology department.

We had to stop at school last week to clean out lockers and pick up supplies from teachers.

And today we start our learning from home!

Thinking of you, loved family members and friends!  Wishing you health and eyes to see the gifts and possibilities in each strange new day.  Praying for healing and strength for our land, so we can soon return to some semblance of normalcy. 

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!