Let Your Garden Grow

Selfie Queen

Somehow, these are all selfies...

Sunday Shenanigans

Pre-church selfie:

Post-church faking:

Evening cosplay:

Take Me Out (of) the Ballgame

On Friday night we attended a local baseball game to see Sophie and all the other elementary/intermediate school chorus students sing the national anthem. We did something similar last year and had a wonderful experience. This time we learned the weather makes a big difference when it comes to enjoying a sporting event. Last year it was a warm day that turned into a very pleasant evening. This year it was cold and rainy. We all brought jackets, but it wasn't enough. Topher and I made it through the bottom of the fifth inning. At that point the temperature had dropped down to 51 degrees. He and I went to warm up in the car. The rest of the family joined us during the eighth inning and we headed home.

Sophie's choir sounded great, though.

Topher was intentionally not smiling. I don't know why.

This beautiful sky was deceptive.

This one is more accurate.

Can you find Sophie? She's the tallest singer.

This is us, huddling together for warmth.

It's Time to Be the Hero

Have you heard of Maycember? It's a phenomenon that exists in our household. May, much like December, is full of end of the year (school year) activities, including concerts.

For the final concert of the year, the middle school chorus joins with the high school chorus. This was nice for us because it combined two concerts into one: Cooper sang with the high school concert choir and Phoebe sang with the middle school chorus.

Phoebe served as the chorus vice-president this year. That means she got to help announce the songs her choir performed. They also presented their director with a bouquet of flowers.

They sounded great. I especially loved when they sang "Homeward Bound."

The concert choir had an awesome entrance through the audience. Cooper is the eighth person in this line walking up to the stage.

This is a large choir and they sounded wonderful!

Towards the end of the evening, the directors handed out awards. Phoebe was one of two middle schoolers to be given an award. She earned it for her leadership and service to the choir. When her name was called she was surprised and kind of flustered. She looked at me and asked if she should go up to the stage. I said yes and she went up and received her award.

And then she prepared to sing her solo! The middle school and high school choirs joined forces and sang "Hero" by a composer who goes by the handle Pinkzebra. One soloist from each school was picked to open the song and Phoebe was floored when she got the solo! She sounded lovely!

At this point after the concert, Cooper and Sophie were both off with friends, otherwise they would have been in this picture too.

It was a long (at least two hours) but wonderful concert. I am so thankful that we live in a school district that values musical education so highly. And I love that my kids get to contribute to that music!

Closing Time

Phoebe had a great closing weekend for Annie. She had fun doing the show, but she was ready for it to be done. She's really looking forward to doing theatre at the high school next year.

Stay Cool

Over a month ago, before my aunt came to visit, our fridge died. The freezer still worked, but the fridge was no longer cooling things to a food safe temperature. We quickly (at midnight, because that's what time the fridge started beeping at us) moved the food out to our smaller garage fridge. After doing some problem solving, we decided to use whatever money we would have spent on a repair toward a new fridge. Bryan ordered it and we waited for it to be delivered. We've been so busy that we pushed back the delivery date. And we pushed it back again. And again. And again. I started calling the garage "our summer kitchen." And I barely went grocery shopping because we had so little room. On Monday of this week the kids were complaining that we were essentially out of food. I told them I would go shopping as soon as we had the new fridge.

Well, the magical delivery day finally arrived on Tuesday.

Here's the old fridge:

And here's the new fridge! It's taller than the old one, so we had to remove the cupboard above it. That's part of why we had to push back the delivery date, we needed time to take it down and paint.

It's huge and fancy and clean and, best of all, it works!

Bus Stop Dance Party

In addition to dancing, they rocked out with air guitar and pantomimed drums while we waited to get Phoebe from the bus stop.

Maths

Now that we're almost to the end of the school year, Topher is starting to bring home his school supplies. He used up his math workbook and brought home the cover, plus a few blank pages still attached to the inside. I found him in the library, writing in his own math problems on those blank pages so he could continue to work on his favorite subject.

All About the Mom

I had a wonderful Mother's Day. 

Bryan made breakfast and dinner. 

I got to shower and get ready for church without anyone yelling for me. 

I sent so many "Happy Mother's Day" texts that Google Voice flagged it as spam and stopped delivering them. I sent Bryan a bunch of test texts to see how different I had to make the message for it to go through.

Topher gave me a coaster he made at school. Then he gathered up several more items (some that belonged to other people) and delivered them to me in a gift bag.

Bryan gave me a mini watermelon, a bag of cherries, and my own container of delicious sugar-free mint chip ice cream.

I even got a short nap before dinner. It ended when Topher woke me up so we could do the "giant Wordle."

It ended with a video call from Peter and a movie with Phoebe and Cooper who both happened to have a virtual day of school on Monday, so they could stay up a little later than usual.

Easy Street

We saw Phoebe perform as Lily St. Regis in her middle school production of Annie. She stole every scene she was in! She did a fantastic job with both her high and squeaky New Jersey accent and her low Texas accent. And for those of you that remember last year when she was the mom in Matilda: this is the same wig. Somehow it seemed even bigger this year.

She has one more weekend of shows.

Break a leg, Phoebe!

The Dark Side

We went to a Star Wars party the weekend of May the 4th. Bryan won the trivia contest and Phoebe won the costume contest. She came dressed as a Sith, her friend loaned the light-saber for the picture.

Waving Through Another Window

The final video I'm going to share from the concert is from Sophie. This, Waving Through a Window from Dear Evan Hansen, is the same song she sang for her school talent show. But instead of the 90 second version, this is the whole song. Bryan bumped the key up a few steps so that it fell a little more comfortably for her.

What Is This Feeling?

Sophie and her friend Gemma had a lot of fun preparing What Is This Feeling? for the concert. They're pretty well matched vocally since they're both such strong singers. The acting was a fun bonus for both of them.

Fun fact: there's a chance this movie won't work. When I uploaded it to YouTube I got a warning that it might not be visible in all territories. So, if you can't see it, let me know. 

Princess Problems

Phoebe's friend Isaac really wanted to sing a duet with her. She's still growing in her comfort level with singing by herself in front of other people, so she was apprehensive. We saw the new Snow White movie when it came out in theaters (so cute!) and this song was fresh on my mind. I suggested it since most of the singing falls to him, but there's still enough for her that it counts as a duet. I love the acting that they got to do with this one. And I think they both sound wonderful.

Hush, Little Baby

Topher was adamant that he do a solo at our Spring Season kids choir concert. Cooper kindly joined him on guitar. Topher got an on-the-spot lesson that everyone makes mistakes and that it's okay to start over. I think they did a great job.

We Will Rock You

Back in January, when we started planning the Easter concert, the question of the kid choir came up. We knew we wanted them to sing a few songs for Easter, but is that all they would do? If so, that would be two seasons in a row of only church music. I suggested that we still have a separate concert for them where they could perform secular music, but we would only do two choir songs and let the kids fill in the rest with solos and small group numbers. I thought this would be a great way to let them learn and perform both kinds of music. So we set the kid concert for the Friday following the Easter concert.

In retrospect, this was a poor choice.

My co-director and I were so worn out by the Easter concert, we really had to drag ourselves to the finish line on the second concert. We still gave it our all, but we were running on fumes by the end of Friday night.

We started by setting up the gym on Thursday. Usually we do this the day of, but Thursday night was our dress rehearsal for the soloists and small group numbers and we wanted them to run through their songs in the proper setup. We only had them come for a short time, long enough to practice their song a few times, then they left and we moved on to the next group. We saved our own kids for last and were there until nearly 10pm.

Topher was so excited for the concert that he wanted to wear his choir shirt to school. This is the sight that I woke up to on Friday morning. I convinced him to change and save the shirt for that night. 

It took most of the day to prepare and gather our supplies. This is after I'd already dropped stuff off the day before.

The kids did a great job. They opened with We Will Rock You (we slipped in this easy bonus choir number) and then sang Better When I'm Dancing. The next twelve songs came from the kids. Then we finished with the whole choir singing Fight Song.

Among the other songs that night, Topher sang Hush, Little Baby while Cooper played the guitar.

Phoebe and her friend Isaac sang Princess Problems from the new Snow White.

Sophie and her friend Gemma sang What Is This Feeling? from Wicked.

And Sophie sang Waving Through a Window from Dear Evan Hansen.

It all went well and we were glad when we finished! I'll post the videos of the songs over the next few days.

Sophie borrowed my phone while we cleaned up.

I borrowed it back to take this picture of the two directors in our new shirt design. Walmart stopped making the green t-shirts (they're only $4 each, we can't beat the price) and some of the kids outgrew them. We had to do a shirt shuffle among the choir and we both gave up our green shirts to kids who needed them. Thankfully, our friend who made the other shirts (her daughter sings in the choir) agreed to make us these new, larger logo shirts!

This choir is so fun and I love that we get to lead it, but it definitely takes a lot of time and energy.