King of the Jungle

Sunday our children's choir presented King of the Jungle. Besides me, Jenna was the only one from our family in the musical this year-- in one pic, she's the angel appearing to Daniel. In the other pic, she's on the very right side of the 2nd row of kids. She did a great job-- all the kids did. And they are so cute at that age! :)

Jeremy and Danielle

Chad's brother, Jer, and his girlfriend, Danielle, were in the area for a week-- they stayed here Fri pm and Sat, and then we went to Hershey Chocolate World and Lancaster with them on Monday. Sorry I can't label each pic-- something goofy going on with the blog. The waterfall one is at The Falling Waters for which our city is named. The goofy pics in the middle are at The Outhouse-- store in Lancaster with lots of interesting/silly items. (Scariest was the mannequin of a man in the ladies' restroom!) The train is in Lancaster-- Strasburg Railroad.
Was very nice to see Jer again, and to finally meet Danielle! I believe they headed back to CO yesterday.

Antietam Rec

A week ago, Jenna and Claie went with a school group to Antietam Recreation for the day-- they enjoyed it greatly... I was much more uptight. I was very concerned about little kids swimming in a large crowd. Thus, I told the girls they couldn't swim until I finished graduation practice and got there to watch. They were a little upset waiting, but, boy, was I glad I had said that! WAY too many kids in one pool. At one point, Jenna was pulled underwater by someone else-- it really upset her. The rest of the day was tons of fun-- a water slide, a zipline, swings that went around, horseback riding, and other fun things. Claire's favorite part was the swing that hung from a VERY tall tree. :)

E&LA&B&H visit

A couple weekends ago, my brother Eric and his family flew in for a long weekend. We mostly did things around home, and it was a great time for our kids to play together. Claire and Boden, esp, really hit it off. They played a lot with Micah's trains. Some of us took a walk down to the Potomac one day, and some went to a train museum in Hagerstown one day. It was gorgeous weather on the weekend!

Hershey Sweetness

Chad and Katie went to Hershey Park with a school group on Friday, May 14. Had lots of fun!

Micah's ABCs

And here's our little 2-year-old soloist. :)

Mother's Day/Baptism

I had a very nice Mother's Day yesterday! It was very busy, but Chad and the kids found time to honor me (and Anita-- they were here overnight after the play and stayed all day) with a "Queen Chair" and several homemade things, which are really neat. We also went out to Hosses for lunch. Treat for everyone, but esp me! During the evening service, Katie was baptized! Special memory, for sure.

Play videos

This solo is near the beginning of the play. Punch is wondering why he's such a failure when it seems like everyone else does things right.

I took this clip on Wed. This was the first day Katie knew she'd have this solo-- up until then, Claudia was going to do this one, but Katie had practiced it as an understudy.

I just love Katie's clear voice-- and good pitch.

Here's Katie's other main solo-- about working hard. She sang it all while scrubbing and working on the floor. The townspeople behind her join in after a while.

I know I'm biased. I'm her mother. But I was as proud as punch. :)

You Are Special

Oops-- these pics got on in backwards order. Above is the cast after the final performance. They had each made a square of a quilt to give to the music teacher.

Here are Katie and Claudia during their bows. I actually took these pics on Wed, during the dress rehearsal.

This is near the end of the play-- Punchinello (Katie) went to Eli's house to try to get help because everything was going wrong. This was one of my 3 favorite scenes of Katie's-- because she got really upset and dramatic. :)

This is another of my 3 favorite scenes-- because of the solo Katie sang in it. I'll try to put a few video clips in the next post. It's a song about working... "gotta keep working, working, working"-- the Wemmicks were having to work very hard to afford the meaningless, useless boxes they thought they all needed to have. This play had some great analogies for life. Really, there are so many things we think are important that really are useless. The box sellers in the play were starting to charge more and more for the boxes because "they were now collector's items". The Wemmick who sold glasses was charging more because she put her name on them-- and she said something like, "Really I should pay the customers to put my name on their glasses."

This was a pic of Katie on Monday-- they put costumes and make-up on for the first time, kind of as a trial run since the teens doing the make-up had never done it before, and there was a photographer there to take cast pics. I think they did a lot better with Katie's make-up later in the week, but you can see her cute costume here. :)

Katie totally LOVED being in this play. She LOVED being on stage. Not a bit nervous. On the way to the 2nd performance, I said, "It'll be nice to be at home in the evenings next week." She agreed but then said, "But I wish we could do a whole WEEK of performances. No, I wish we could do a whole YEAR of them. I wish we could tour the country!"

She esp loved her solos-- loved having the spotlight and singing out. Next year, I think Lori's going to try to do a play-- not a musical-- so more non-musical people can have lead parts. I asked Katie if she would like that, and she said she still would. :)

Claire's Field Trip

Claire had a field trip yesterday-- she was Very, Very Excited. Daddy went along, so he got some good pics. Above is her on the bus, with her friend Jenna.

Their first stop was Uno's-- a pizza restaurant. They got to make their own personal size pizzas and then tour the restaurant while the pizzas baked. Their favorite part of the tour was probably the walk-in freezer. They did this all before 11am when the restaurant opens.

After the Uno's stop, they went to a park. Had tons of fun playing hard. Beautiful day! Really tired the kids out...

Last stop was at an animal hospital. This has been a favorite kindergarten field trip for years. Katie remembers loving it when she was 5.

Blossoming

Wowie! I wish you all could come to the play this weekend! Katie's really blossoming as an actress. And she loves it. :) It's a play with 6th-12th graders (but mostly middle schoolers), and she's one of the best there. She's being very dramatic, and she has great enunciation and projection with her voice.

Let me explain a little how it works. Katie is sharing the main role with another girl. Because it's such a huge memory part, Mrs. B wanted to have an understudy, but she didn't want one person to go thru all the work and then not be on stage at all. My solution to that would have been to have Katie do one whole performance and Claudia do the other, but Mrs. B really wanted to split it. Claudia and Katie are the same size, and both have brown eyes. With their costumes (which include yarn wigs) and make-up on, they look very much alike. Claudia has Puerto Rican skin, but that difference isn't very noticeable with the make-up. Their voices aren't identical, but I don't know how obvious that will be to people. It'll be interesting to hear what people think. I've heard it all so many times that I'm not a good judge.

So, Mrs. B has them each doing part of the play. Before yesterday, she had split it up so that Katie was doing about 1/3 and Claudia 2/3. However, Claudia was having trouble with one of the solos in her section and she was having trouble with all the memorization. Katie had that part down cold, so last night Mrs. B gave her that section as well. Now it's probably closer to 1/2 and 1/2. Katie was thrilled! And, at the end of the rehearsal (10pm last night), Mrs. B specifically complimented Katie on how well she's doing.

I'm tired-- such a huge week-- but I'm so glad Micah's not here. I don't know how I could handle taking care of him, too. Rehearsal yesterday was 8:30-12:00 and then 6:30 to 10pm. I did 4 lessons between the two rehearsals. And today it's 12:00 noon to 10pm. I will have an hour or so break in the middle while they are getting costumes/make-up on, so I'm going back to the school to do one piano lesson.

We'll definitely post pics after this weekend. I'll have the camera tonight at the dress rehearsal, too, so maybe I'll be able to sneak around to the front of the set and get a little video of Katie so I can put that on the blog, too.

Weekend fun

Chad took the girls with him to stay overnight at the school Fri pm. This is a big deal for them, as you can imagine.

After an IHOP breakfast Sat morning, Chad dropped Katie off with me at our all-day play practice, and then he took Micah up to his parents' house. They are keeping Micah all week, because I have play practices every day.

Sat afternoon Chad took Jenna to a bday party at the Hagerstown ice rink. This is Jenna with Olivia. Jenna really enjoyed ice skating!

BIG praise!

BIG praise to God for safety-- Chad rode his bike to school on Friday. While on Rt. 11, heading toward the river, a car clipped his handlebar. Chad wiped out, but he was able to jump right up and get off the road. Several people stopped to make sure he was OK. The man who did it was about 75ish, and couldn't remember his phone number when Chad asked him for it. (Think maybe he shouldn't be driving?) The man's mirror was cracked at handlebar height, and Chad's handlebar was a bit bent.

Praising God for safety-- all he had was a bruise on one leg, a scrape on a leg, and a very small scrape on a finger. He got back on his bike and rode the rest of the way to school.

Michelle