Anne of Green Gables

As is usually the case during play season, our lives have been consumed with this fall's drama, Anne of Green Gables.  Though it was SO much hard work and not without its stresses and tears, we all recognize what a gift it was to be able to perform during this weird time!  This weekend's two outdoor shows were magnificent and we've spent the past few days basking in the ALL the feelings and good things: family visitors, praise from so many, the pride of a job well done, and even that freeing sense of relief!  For the sake of memory preservation, here are a few pictures capturing a few favorite moments where our endearing, earnest, irresistible, hilarious Anne captured our hearts on stage...

"Oh please call me Cordelia.  It's so much more romantic.  If you must call me Anne, at least call me Anne spelled with an 'e'."

"I HATE YOU! How dare you call me skinny and ugly!  How dare you call attention to my freckles!  You are a rude, impolite, unfeeling woman!"

"That dreadful woman did terrible things to me.  I'd just convinced myself, after months of imagining, that my freckles were beauty marks, and she spoiled it all.  I'll never be happy again." (Funny backstory, Ella's best friend Ruth played Rachel, and hating and screaming at Ruth was Ella's hardest scene.)

"Not come over?  Oh Diana, does your mother realize what it would mean to me to have my bosom friend torn asunder? My love for you is inextinguishable."

"Anne, you can't go on being bad friends with me forever.  I promise never to mention your freckles again if you forgive me."  

"What you ask is impossible!  If I do decide to go on living, there are two paths in front of me.  And I choose the one leading furthest away from YOU!"

"Appears that list of kindred spirits is growing mighty rapid, Anne..." 

"Oh yes, Matthew, but of course you head the list, that goes without saying."

"That wasn't vanilla in the bottle!  You've gone and flavored the layer cake with Chloroform Liniment!"

"You see yesterday, while Marilla was out, a peddler came to the back door, and he offered to sell me a box of freckle-remover for only ten cents.  It was the last box of it he had and he said it was guaranteed to removed freckles from anybody.  Guaranteed!  I bought the freckle-remover and I thought I'd try it out on Dimples the pig because I love her so much and I know she must suffer with all those freckles on her, same as I do from mine.  Yes, and now poor Dimples is all broken out and my heart is broken. I just felt it go dead inside me.  Matthew, you'll have to punish me something dreadful for this!"

"Josie Pye said terrible things to Anne, just because she asked her not to mention that Gilbert Blythe's name to her.  Oh Anne, I'm so sorry, I used his name.  It just slipped out!"

"I forgive you freely, dear Diana.  I know that you didn't intend to wound me and that your motive was pure."

"A white dress with puff sleeves!  I will spend most of my time gazing at it with sheer joy.  I have the most comfortable feeling that the very first time I'm seen in that dress somebody is going to call me Lady Cordelia!"

"Oh Anne, you blessed girl!  You've saved us from ruin.  Whatever should we have done without you? There, you see Matthew!  And you were the one who wanted to adopt a boy!  I've always known that I loved you, Anne dear, but I never could let myself go until today.  I've just  been an old fool."

"You know how I feel about you, Anne.  You've always known."

(This version had a surprise twist ending!)  A rich Uncle Ira Mills finds his long lost niece Anne Shirley in Green Gables...and what do you know?!  She's living with his former fiancé, Marilla Cuthbert, with whom he rekindles a relationship!  Tidy, happy endings all around! ;)

"I don't want to imagine anything more than I have right now because I'm so happy.  For I am Anne of Green Gables, and that is all I ever hope or want to be."

Happy, proud, starstruck family!  

Friday night's performance was great.  Saturday's was so high energy, and perfect, the cast absolutely killed it!  In fact, our director even posted this! 

We're so thankful Uncle Kyle could fly out and represent our larger VM family in the audience!

After each performance, Ella was delighted to connect with the many people who love her and came out to support her.  Above, two girls she babysits each week.  Below, her boyfriend Evan.

Ella's special friend, and senior mentor from last year, Tina, even came home from college in Southern California to surprise and cheer for her former drama family!

Ella said the best part of this play was growing her friendship with Emma and Briley (Marilla and Diana).  These gals bonded over their many shared scenes and hundreds of lines. 

Had to get a picture of Anne with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert.

All the girls on cast.

All the sophomores on cast.

And just a few fun stories to close.  Above are two of my former students, the most adorable little redheads.  When their mom found out about the play, she started introducing them to the story this fall.  She'd message me about how excited they were to see it on stage.  When it was over, these two cuties came running up to take a picture with Anne, their redheaded kindred spirit. ;)  And they weren't the only ones!  Ella said she took lots of pictures with little girls, some she didn't even know, who just wanted to give her a hug afterwards!

We realized that in this play Ella and Emma reprised a mother/daughter stage relationship they started in 5th grade!  

My dear friend Donna's son Ben played Matthew.  He is a senior and this was his first play!  He was amazing, and watching Donna become a Drama Mama was a delight!  An hour before Friday's performance, she called me to exclaim, "AM I SUPPOED TO FEEL LIKE I'M ABOUT TO PUKE?!?!" We sat together and grabbed each other at all the touching parts that our kids were nailing.

  

 

All weekend my phone blew up with people telling me to tell Ella what a phenomenal job she did.  We were blessed to have so much church family there!  This was one of my favorite emails from our Chaplain Jack and his wife!

It's bittersweet.  This one was harder than plays of the past.  Ella carried a heavy burden of learning so many lines, covering for people who were struggling with the lines up to the day before the performance, and doing justice to such a beloved character.   She's been dying for a lead and now that she's on this side of having had one, tells me, "I never want the lead again!"  So she is happy it's done.  But, she's more happy it ended on such a perfect, high note!  Giving what she says was "her personal best performance ever."  I need Anne Shirley to invent and tell me a word more dramatic, romantic and conducive than "proud" because that is just not cutting it for what we feel about Ella taking on this role and honoring it, her audience, and her Lord with the use of her gifts!

Fall Fun!

Way back in September, the girls' school year launched with a Day Camp model-- our school's creative way to be in compliance with the rules, while still hosting students on campus.  The idea was for the kids to do distance learning, at school, in unmoving and unchanging pods of peers.  It got the kids out of the house and allowed for a bit of interaction with friends.  We're glad our school thought outside the box for this solution, but we're also very glad that, as our county's COVID numbers have been good for 2 weeks now, the Camp model is over and we are officially back to normal, in-person instruction this week!!

One perk to Camp COVID (as we liked to call it), was the half day schedule and asynchronous Wednesdays.  The flexibility allowed me to take the girls home with me at 1:00 every day.  Or sometimes, we'd have lunch dates...or the girls would go out with their friends when their half day of Camp was over.  After months of training to be sloths at home, it was a wonderful way to ease back into the rigors of school!

One of Delia's assignments was to take the Meyers Briggs personality test.  So, we all took it and were tickled, and not at all surprised, by our results!  The VM Four are comprised of a Leader, a Planner, a Free Spirit, and an Administrator.  Guess who is who! ;)

This fall, Delia also began her 27 week Invisalign Journey.  We are loving this alternative to braces!  As Ella is on year 4 of braces and still taking regular ibuprofen for the aches and pains of wrangling the warring teeth in her mouth into place, Delia is breezing through her trays with little pain and inconvenience!  Worth the big bucks to the ortho, I guess!

We are plugging along in preschool too, now in our 3rd month of in-person instruction.  Teachers and students have remained 100% healthy and protected from COVID thus far!  Praise the Lord!  For Jungle Week, my co-teacher and I found our masks to be a fun, new, festive accessory!

My birthday was once again celebrated well, with SO much love from co-workers, friends and family members!  The four of us enjoyed a nice birthday weekend dinner at one of our favorite outdoor restaurants together.  Annnnnd, Ella hasn't been home for a Friday night since!

Life is feeling normal again!  Our weekends are full of parties, weddings, and places to be.  School is resuming, plays are performing, church ministries are kicking off.  We still err on the side of caution, keeping the bubble of people we spend close time with pretty specific, and taking necessary mask-wearing and social distancing precautions, lest life gets shut down again.  But, it's been a season to be thankful and cognizant of all the little gifts we took for granted last year! 

"Red Hair is My Lifelong Sorrow..." -Anne Shirley

Because you can't play Anne Shirley without red hair! ;)

 Two weeks of dress and tech on their new outdoor stage and then it's PERFORMANCE TIME!! 

All About Anne

Two weeks ago, we were all in our Friday Night Chill mode.  The girls had been back to "Camp" for a week and were readjusting to the rigors of school work after a lazy 6 months.  A scream suddenly broke through our daze: our sophomore hollering "I GOT ANNE!!!!!" as the cast list for Anne of Green Gables was emailed.  

This is super special.  We are big fans of Anne Shirley, having watched her movie multiple times as a family and at friend gatherings.  We've read her book.  And her graphic novel.  We quote her each Almond Blossom season as we enjoy our own "White Way of Delight".  Getting to play such a familiar and beloved character is a real honor for Ella.  I think Anne and Ella share a whimsical, imaginative, earnest, endearing quality too. Maybe that's why she was cast? :)

Or maybe she was cast because, for her audition, she nailed a 3 page monologue...that she memorized the day of during her asynchronous learning time!  A fact that blew her director away.  We were delighted (to borrow another of Anne's words) to find Dave's Anne of Green Gables script in an old tub of school stuff.  He played the station master in 7th grade and still remembers his ONE line.  Ella counted, she has 235 lines!!  And they are all small monologues.

We're praying the plan for an outdoor performance at the end of October can be a reality.  Though, much of drama is about the process and right now it is just a gift for Ella to attend regular play practices, using her gifts, working hard, and laughing with her actor kindred spirits again.  

Starting A New School Year at the End of the World ;)

On Wednesday I wrapped my cute, zebra face mask around my wrist and loaded my car with my own school bag and the girls.  We were headed to the First Day of School, but strangely, I was the only one actually going!  The pandemic has pushed the girls' start date out till after Labor Day, but the preschool operates under different mandates, so we could launch a new school year on our empty campus.  Delia was going to spend the day with her friends doing fun NOT First Day of School science experiments and Ella had been babysitting for a fellow teacher all week.  As we braced for the predicted 111 degree day, with ash raining down on our car, and a creepy red sun above casting an apocalyptic orange glow over everything, I asked, "Hey, if Jesus comes back today...you guys are good right?"  We discussed our salvation and the new heaven and the new earth as we made the familiar 20 minute drive to the town our school is in.  STRANGEST FIRST DAY EVER.

  

So, what does teaching preschool in a pandemic look like?  Here are a few visuals that I once again just want to record for memory.  Because oh how I hope we'll someday look back on these strange days and say, "Remember when?"

We teachers wear masks and shields.  When I'm interacting with parents, I like the fabric mask.  When the kids need to see my face, because it's impossible to teach without facial expression, I wear the clear shield.

We practice social distancing.  Half the spots on my carpet are closed, my kids spread out at snack time, and do all their lining up in marked spots we carefully put all over the grounds.  I taught a new song on the First Day this year: "Let's keep a little distance, some distance, some distance.  Let's keep a little distance between you and me.  So my germs stay my germs.  And your germs stay your germs.  Let's keep a little distance between you and me."

Look how amazing the kids already are at sitting and lining up!  It's only been a few days!!! I have a couple wonderful classes this year!

My kids all have their own personal supplies (crayons, play dough, folders, etc...), we wash our hands and the toys lots and lots.  We don't mix with other classes, parents no longer enter my classroom, everyone who enters the building gets their temperature taken.  We teachers worked hard to plan, re-imagine our room, and get on the same page about new procedures.  And it paid off, implementing these changes has actually gone pretty smoothly this week!

But, if navigating a whole new way of running a classroom wasn't enough of a challenge this week, we also had a crazy heat wave and nearby wildfires making our air quality super unhealthy.  On Wednesday it was okay enough for me to take the kids out for just a few minutes to show them the playground.  But since then, we've  been indoors all day.  I'm getting the wiggles out with aerobics, obstacle courses, and movement games.  The good news is that school is so new, my students don't know what they're missing yet, I guess!  The pictures above are my First Day pics and they have NO filter-- this is what it looks like outside right now!  See all the ash on the slides?!

So, we'll see what this year brings.  My co-worker came in this week and said, "Who has 'State Destroying Wildfires' on their 2020 BINGO cards?"  I continue to rest in the assurance that God is in control and the knowledge that being resilient and able to pivot are skills we've developed well this year!