Full Hearts at Family Weekend

When we hugged Ella goodbye in August and said, "See you at the end of October", that felt sooo far away!  I'm thankful the months flew by with everyone thriving and loving life.  There was no part of our Family Weekend with Ella at college that wasn't awesome.  Seeing our girl, meeting her people, and being immersed in her world for a few days filled our hearts with overflowing happiness.  Her college mixed in some special Family Weekend activities and we were intentional about getting Ella off-campus for some fun meals and outings.  And the whole weekend was even perfectly timed with our own Friday off school!

  

We timed our travels perfectly to meet Ella right as she emerged from a class at noon.  We were excited to take her out for lunch.  I loved watching these sisters run into each others' arms at first sight of each other.  Ella does not hate the Caf food, but didn't complain about a break from it for the weekend.  First non-Caf meal was at a fun little Pho restaurant.  

Ella's Friday schedule includes a 3 hour afternoon chemistry lab, so after lunch we dropped her back off and headed out to tour a nearby college in SoCal.  This is the same school Ella looked at last year and probably would have also done very well at.  We wanted Delia to see it also.  Though, she was impressed with its aesthetic and fun features, Delia did not get that gut feeling that this is where she's being called.  Getting a front row seat to see Ella thrive at her school has made a big impact on Delia and it's likely both girls will end up at the same place.

Back to Ella's college, where we met her for a delicious picnic dinner on the lawn, followed by the annual fall talent show which was tons of goofy fun!  We enjoyed spreading our blanket by Ella's good friend, and twin!, Ava, and her family and getting to know them a bit.  After the talent show, Ella invited us to her Friday night Swing Dance Club, where she was recently elected a leader of!  So fun to catch some of the dancing under the patio lights and meet some of the friends Ella has met in this club.  Delia learned some new moves.

Saturday morning we 3 girls got into the awesome mother/daughter self defense class taught by the charismatic chief of police at the school.  It's a strange thing to have fun with, but it was an experience I'm glad to have shared with the girls!  When asked who wanted to actually try their punches and kicks on a real dude (wearing a super padded outfit), Ella volunteered and suited up for battle!  She did great!

We got free shirts and pepper spray for attending the class!  But, the coolest thing was after learning the facts and moves and practicing, the class ended with the chief of police praying protection over each of us women and asking the Lord to ensure we'd never have to use what we learned.

The afternoon was ours and Ella said what she'd most like would be an off-campus outing.  She and all her friends are car-less and mostly bound to campus, so she was anxious to explore.  I found the perfect museum for us-- the California Science Center!  Free to the pubic and located on the USC campus right in the middle of all the 1984 LA Olympics structures, it was a neat part of the city that was new to us.  This museum is famous for housing the Endeavor Space Shuttle.  It has a giant NASA exhibit that we all found interesting.

It wasn't all space, though.  This museum covered just about every aspect of science in a cool hands-on way.  Between Delia's AP Environmental Science class and Ella's Bio and Chem classes this semester, we frequently heard, "I'm learning about this right now!"  We walked through a small aquarium, saw each stage of baby development in the womb, visited the desert, arctic, and deep sea, and learned about different animal mating rituals to name just a few of the random sciences we explored.

The girls tried using a giant lever to lift a pickup truck.

We wandered through beautiful gardens.

And we cracked ourselves up in the "Casa de Fuego" where we were supposed to learn about fire safety, but decided to recreate memes instead. 

We swung back by school to pick up a few of Ella's friends for dinner at a cozy local Italian restaurant.  What's better than a big plate of homecooked pasta when you've been eating in the school cafeteria for months?  These are 2 of Ella's closest friends who did not have their own families in town for this night of Family Weekend, Tori and Ava.  Bethany and Jasmine are her other 2 besties, but they weren't able to join us.  We loved getting to know these sweet funny girls.  Both are psychology majors, something Delia is considering, so it was encouraging for her to hear their passion and plans for the future too.

After dinner we asked if we could take the girls anywhere special, any shopping or outings they were needing or craving.  Tori sweetly asked if we could just get desert together, so our easy conversation and laughter continued over froyo.  The girls then invited us back to the dorm to join them in Jackbox games!  We felt so cool and included! ;)

While Dave and I stayed in a nearby hotel, Delia stayed in the dorm with Ella and her friends.  She didn't sleep great, but loved the taste of college life and is all revved up about how she's gonna decorate her own dorm in a few years!  Ella's been bouncing between 3 churches.  One has amazing warm fellowship; one has amazing worship and does communion every Sunday, which she loves; and one has amazing preaching.  We went to the amazing preaching church and then out for after-church pancakes and omelets at a nearby diner where we talked about how hard it is to find the 3 things you're looking for in 3 different churches. ;)

Hugging Ella goodbye at the end of this weekend was so much easier!  There were no tears.  We will see her again in a few weeks for Thanksgiving, but the ease for me was in seeing how well she's fitting into her new life.  

Behind the Scenes

All the audience ever sees is the spectacle-- the costumes, the lights, the singing, dancing, and acting.  But you don't get that without the months, weeks, days, and HOURS of time spent together polishing and perfecting.  This is where the heart of drama lies, in the authentic relationships built as you are, ironically, pretending to be someone else.  This cast was called "one of the sweetest casts ever, so encouraging and helpful to one another!" and "Practically perfect!" by their director.  

 

Selfies!

Though not the lead of the play, Delia has always played a leadership role in her casts, especially ones with younger actors.  Nothing could make us prouder than hearing about how she uses her encouraging spirit to make everyone feel welcome and appreciated.

Gettin' their hair done.

Some fun with the Supercalifragalistic blocks.  I guess they spelled something silly, that the audience couldn't see, with these prop blocks every night.

Bird Woman, Mrs. Banks, Jane, Mary and the Spoon pausing to pose.

Chimney Sweep huddle.

Feeling dapper in the Jolly Holiday costumes.

And the traditional after-show stage pictures.  We're proud, happy Drama Parents!

Delia loved our post show gift-- a bag of candy with spoons taped all over it.  Get it?  A spoonful of sugar...

The Juniors on cast.

Lots of little fans came to see the play!  Delia enjoyed chatting and taking pics with all her little church buddies afterward.  Jade has always had a special place in Delia's heart.

With some best friends.  Above, Natalie and Laura.  Below, with Bella, who played the evil nanny to hilarious perfection.  She was one of my favorites!

Good pal Nich (Bert), who Delia has now shared numerous shows with!  You may recognize him as Mr. Darcy. He's a big talent!

This trio of BFFs is always up for a goofy pose.  This time they made us moms recreate it.  We nailed it.  Haha!

And a sweet one too.  Love when our kids' friends bring friends in to our life too.  This has become a very dear group-- texting regularly, sharing rides and homes for our kids to hang at, making meals, and even worshipping together!

Mary Poppins!

This weekend Mary Poppins, the show Delia has dedicated all her after-schools, Saturdays, and days off to rehearsing culminated in 4 wonderful, audience-delighting performances!  It's always a thrill to see these productions come together and this one was no exception.  Ella's class brought a lot of talent and star power to our drama program.  It was hard to imagine a show without her dozen friends leading the cast and running the tech.  But, this younger cast stepped up and delivered!  When Mary Poppins was announced last year, Delia knew right away she wanted to be in the ensemble-- not missing the chance to sing and dance in any of the big, iconic numbers.  Though she read for bigger parts at the audition, she was thrilled to learn she got exactly what she wanted!  Jolly Holiday, Feed the Birds, Spoonful of Sugar, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Step in Time, and Let's Go Fly a Kite are all now on her acting resume!  And she even scored a cute little extra role as the Spoon!  Since this cast was lot more inexperienced, the process was not without its moments of stress at practices, but it came together for performance weekend, as it always does. Here are a few of the 200 pictures our photographer graciously shares with us (I picked the ones with a Delia-focus ;).

 

We meet the dysfunctional Banks family.  Actual kids were cast as Jane and Michael and they were phenomenal!  Fun fact: the boy playing Michael was once one of my favorite preschool students! :)

After a sweet plea for a nanny who plays games and gives sweets, Mary Poppins flies into their lives.  The kids quickly learn that she's "tricky" and regular things like a walk in the park can turn into a magical Jolly Holiday fast.    

Delia's big moment!  Actual dancing spoons brought a new "element of fun" to the song Spoonful of Sugar!

In my opinion, the best sounding, but most underrated, song was Feed the Birds, a whole cast number that blended every voice in its haunting tune.  Featuring Delia's best friend Tessa as the Bird Woman!

The magic continues as Mary Poppins teaches everyone a fun new word.  With its high energy and most challenging choreography, this song was the big before-intermission show stopper.

The stage version of Mary Poppins is slightly different.  Mary Poppins leaves for a while and is replaced by an evil nanny.  But after a bit of a nanny show-down, we're back in familiar territory on the rooftops of London for the crowd-favorite Step in Time.  Delia was a lead dancer in this one with a solo.  It was her favorite.  Her good friend Nich, who plays Bert, is also an acrobat and stunned with a series of across-the-stage flips and tricks each night.

"What's all this?  Step in Time!  What's all this?  Step in Time!"  The Banks home is inundated with a crowd of dancing chimney sweeps.

The broken family (and kite!) is mended after a tense scene at the bank and it's time to Go Fly a Kite!

In this version, as Mary Poppins leaves she sings the line (to the tune of Spoonful of Sugar) "In every job you must complete, there is a sense of bittersweet.  The moment when you know the task is done..."  It's wistful and nostalgic and perfectly sums up the feelings that always accompany a final curtain call.  We're thankful for these opportunities to use gifts, make friends, and accomplish something so wonderful with team and hard work.  And we're always happy to get a piece of our lives back as the busyness settles.  But it's invariably a bit sad that it's over too.

An Update from College

Since the #1 conversation Dave, Delia and I have with people lately is "How Ella is Doing", thought I'd write a post with some of the pictures she sends me so you all could see how she is thriving and living her best life!  First, this is not a surprise.  We've always known that Ella was built for college.  She does her best work when challenged.  She's always been good at making new friends.  And we weren't too worried about her being homesick, since she was away from home with a busy schedule for much of her high school years.  One thing we have all found and love is that absence from her family does seem to have made her heart grow fonder.  We text every day.  We FaceTime on Sundays.  She usually talks to Dave on the phone (he likes that ;) once a week.  She's been very good at sending pictures of her new friends and fun activities, so we feel very in the loop.  This weekend we had a text thread so hilarious, I laughed so hard I cried!  This new phase of our relationship with Ella has had such a neat intentionality to it, we've been really enjoying it!  We'll get to see her at the end of October for Family Weekend (Delia will even stay in the dorm with Ella and her friends!), and we're so excited to see her in person!

Ella's schedule is major.  She's taking maximum credit hours.  One of her classes is 7:30 am three times a week.  One is a night class.  Two of her classes, chemistry and biology, each come with 4 hour labs every week.  She does spend a lot of time studying.  But she's keeping A's in almost all her classes!  She's finding chemistry to be her hardest, but most interesting.  She's more average in that class, which is something new, and that makes her question if she's on the right career path.  She may want something medical that's not necessarily pre-med, something with all the anatomy/physiology she loves, but less chemistry.  

We find this so delightful.  One of Ella's new best friends is Ava, HER APPARENT TWIN!! These two have been having lots of fun confusing everyone in their dorm this first month.  They say they plan to swap outfits and go to each other's classes and see if anyone will notice!  Haha!  (Mask because Ella's roommate tested positive for Covid in the first week and she had to mask up for a few days.)  Ella's roommate has been someone she can live with comfortably and compatibly.  They do cute things like make dinner together one night a week.  But, the roommate is local and goes home every Thursday to Sunday, leaving Ella the room to herself, and forcing Ella to find her people in other places. 

Which she has had no trouble doing!  One of my favorite new memories was a night we were Face Timing Ella and her new crowd of friends came into her room, popping in our call to say, "Hi Mr. and Mrs VM!! We LOVE your daughter!!!" Above is a picture from Nation Ball night.  At my college, we had Chaos Day, and this is Ella's version of that-- an epic night of dorm competition.  Her dorm is coed for the first time in its history, so it was the first year they did not get creamed! ;)  They actually came in second place and Ella said the night was so fun.   Her current favorite thing about life is the Swing Dance Club she and her friends joined and do every Friday night!

Above and below is another one of Ella's new best friends, Tori.  They spent a Saturday serving the church they have been attending.  This made us laugh.  Their church is a Baptist church and the job they were assigned was to scrub out the dusty baptismal tank!  Ella was like, "You know this job would be so much easier if you just used a bowl!"  LA's weather gives them a cool marine layer each morning, so Ella loves being not so hot and busting out all the fun fall sweaters well before we usually wear them.  I guess she and Tori looked cute one morning, so their RA made them pose.

Ella is already dreaming about her exciting future and how her gifts will be best used in summer's valuable free time.  She's exploring going to 6 week EMT school, or being a counselor at Mount Hermon, or this-- the internship at JPL that our tour guide sold so hard!  Her research seemed to indicate that the NASA application might have been made for her.  We'll see where the Lord leads!

And one last picture of one of our many fun Face Times!  We so look forward to this weekly time to catch up and laugh together about the week's random things like emotional support cats, quinoa hate, Dave accidentally sending his exegetical commentary Amazon orders to Ella, stump removal, moldy rug adventures, cute boys in the dorm, and skeleton unboxing.  We miss her, of course, but we know how settled and happy she is in this perfect-for-her new home and that makes us all say, "We're doing great!" when we get daily asked how we're surviving.