Weekend Wrap-Up

It was a big weekend at the Henhouse.  Papa Rooster came home, after a week of absence--his second in a row.  All this traveling on his calendar, and my inability to join him, has got us thinking about ways of celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary, coming up this December.  We always say we'll get away some other part of the year, when it's not as busy as Christmas time, but then we rarely do.  Or it's connected to his company's big March conference, like when we went to San Antonio last year and Orlando the year before, and that's what he just returned from.  So we're thinking of celebrating early this year.  We're looking online at last-minute deals, and I'm getting excited!

He returned on Friday in time to make the kids' auditions for Robin Hood, our spring musical.  Wish I had time to figure out how to share video.  (PR thinks it's complicated and hates doing it, which doesn't encourage me, and our teens never use the good camera, just their phones, so they're no help.)  So let me describe them briefly, because they all did so well!

B12 performed the theme from The Muppet Show: "It's time to play the music/ It's time to light the lights/ It's time to meet the Muppets/ On the Muppet Show tonight!"  He started out marching, walking like an Egyptian, and playing the tenor sax before the singing actually began, and he did two character voices in the middle for the two old guys in the balcony who ask, "Why do we always come here? /I guess we'll never know/ It's like a kind of torture/ To have to watch this show!"  His facial expressions were hilarious throughout.

Chicklet8 performed "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music, from "Let's start at the very beginning...." After years of watching her parents help her older siblings think of movements and choreography for their audition choices, C8 hardly needed any help coming up with her own little moves and dance steps for "doe, a deer" and  "ray, a drop of golden sun," and so on.  She is especially good at facial expressions, and she tries hard to put expression in her voice too.  She was just so darn cute!  You'd never have guessed it was only her second audition.

B15 auditioned as well--his first time in over a year.  He ended up using the same romantic ballad he sang last time, "Till There Was You," by the Beatles.  But this time, instead of doing it straight, he decided to lighten it up unexpectedly.  So he sang the first lines beautifully, "There were bells/ On a hill/ But I never heard them ringing," reaching a hand to his ear as if listening; on the next line "No, I never heard them at all," he began twisting his finger in his ear as if digging out earwax, then pulled it, examined it, and then pointed with it as he sang the next line, "Till there was you."  Then he wiped it on his pants and continued on in that lighthearted, only-half-serious vein.  It was great.

Both boys were called back for lead roles on Saturday, and C8 was slightly disappointed not to get a callback too, since there were three speaking parts for little children.  Meanwhile, Blondechick was at a Solo and Ensemble contest as part of a trio from her school choir.  They sang "Nelly Bly," a very cute arrangement, with one girl singing the melody and the other two singing "bum, bum; bum, bum" as accompaniment.  The judge had almost nothing but good things to say, and they are going on to the State competition in May!

BC showed me a video of her trio that her friend had put on Facebook, and I asked as I listened, "Are you in the middle?"  BC knew I was referring to the vocals, but B15, the true "blonde" of the family, said, "Mom, I can't believe you don't recognize your own daughter!" Oh, B15....

But maybe that "blondeness" helped him get the role of Little John! In the script, Little John is rather a simpleton, and B15 came home from callbacks feeling that he had done especially well at that part. He'll have a fair amount of singing to do, too, and has to sing in his head voice in one song, as a gypsy woman pretending to tell fortunes.  B12 is a Merry Man--a short one--which means he'll spend a lot of time on stage and get to sing and sword-fight!  And Chicklet was delighted to be cast, after all, in the speaking part she had wanted; she is Cindy, one of the Widow's children.  (I have no idea how such an anachronistic name worked its way into this medieval show, but there it is.)

On Sunday, our church sponsored a concert with the Lenten theme of "Dust."  It was a new work, a song-cyle for soprano, string quartet and live electronics, based on seven poems that our worship leader wrote over a period of years while she was living in Israel at different times. It had a meditative and modern sound, with a classical feel.  The soprano had a beautiful operatic voice, the string parts were full of dissonances and some beautiful resolutions, and the electronic sounds--mostly words and parts of words--served to reinforce the themes and images of the poems, which were about our humanity and our smallness:  "We are but dust."  The concert was well-attended by many besides those in our congregation, mostly those who knew someone involved in the project, so it was good exposure for our little church and blessed many people, I believe.  To God be the glory!