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Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Erm, Hello?

I am not going to try to explain or apologize for being such a poor blogger.  I will try to catch you up instead. :)  This is going to be rather kid-centric cause that's what's been going on- mostly.




Back in October, Lila came to her father and I and said "I want to play Hockey".  After the first "huh?" and shock of the statement, Lila was being hauled off by Will to learn to play hockey and SKATE in Manistique. Yes, that is correct.  She had to learn to skate first.  I will be the first person to point out that I never, ever, would be brave enough to do this.  Lila started out skating with a "chair" but soon outgrew it and improved every practice...and then the games started!  The Manistique Wildcats is an all ages (up to 19) all girl team that plays other girls teams in the upper peninsula and northern lower peninsula.    Practices 2x a week and games most weekends.  The furthest we had to travel was to Alpena in the northern lower, and Houghton in the UP.  They were fun games and we all enjoyed them, except for the minor concussion Lila suffered in Game 2 which was a fun experience all in itself and happened on my Birthday!  I think the major trauma suffered was having to remove the cartilage piercing for the CT scan (they were easy to get back in).  By the time the season was over, Lila was in good skating form and making passes and taking goal shots.  We are really proud of her and she wants to play again next season.


While hockey was going on two nights a week and weekends, there was also Glee which involved three productions and a coffeehouse fundraiser night.  Glee practices were on Sunday.  A big group of Lila's friends were in Glee and it was the largest number of kids in the history of the club.
(the freshman are on the ground and Lila is all the way to the left)
The performances were wonderfully staged and the music varied from contemporary to Franky Vally.
 
For the coffeehouse performance, the kids were allowed to sing in small groups or as solo's.  Lila chose to do a duo of the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams are Made of These" with a senior.
After a minor kerfuffle she blew the crowd away.  We still have people telling us how much the enjoyed her performance.  I'm not at all proud....

Did I mention that the other nights of the week were devoted to Drama Club?  "Letters to Sala" was the play and Lila had a large part for a first time production and everyone did an amazing job for the amount of dialogue and the seriousness of the subject matter.



Lila's buddy Kendra was one of Sala's workcamp friends from the 1940's and Lila played one of Sala's grand-daughters set in 1990's NYC.  All timeframes were on the set at once which was really interesting.

After the drama production was over, both Duncan and Sam joined middle school drama.  They practiced a couple of days a week after school and culminated in a series of short vignettes about Fractured Fairy Tales that landed the mis-behavers in court.  Both Duncan and Sam were in the "Little Boy Blue" skit.  Duncan played Little Boy Blue, and Sam was the farmer who was wronged.  It was damn hilarious!  I have a few pictures, but they are not where I am.  This is due to the fact that in January, instead of erasing my old phone, I erased my NEW phone. 
 Yes.  I did that.
Fortunately, I had emailed some of those photos home.
Oh Hey, I just figured out how to find them!
Not the best quality, but you get the idea.




Duncan, who is in sixth grade, is also in band.  He started out playing Alto Sax, but was talked into trying the Baritone Sax.  We've been to two performances and he played the baritone sax in the last one.  I wish I had a picture because the bloody instrument is as tall as he is!  He's doing a great job.


Sam won second place in the district spelling bee and so moved on to the UP Regional spelling bee- I think this was in February.  We drove to Neguanee for that and he got to take a day off school to participate (which I think was his main motivation).  The winner of the regional bee went on to the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C.  all expenses paid.  It wasn't Sam.  It was a young man from Calumet.  Sam did a good job and stayed in quite a while but got stumped on Sarsaparilla which was funny because it was one of the words we practiced a lot because it is a silly word.  ;)


(more lousy iPhone photos in a dark room)


Somewhere in all of this we celebrated the holidays, and after all of this Lila started Drama practices for "The Sound of Music" which opens and closes this weekend.  She is a singing nun, a neighbor of the Von Trapp Family, and one of a singing trio at the end.  The best part is she has had some voice coaching for her singing (which is mostly in Latin).  The worst part has been all of the 6-8 practices every evening for many straight days.  The poor child is a glutton for punishment.

Meanwhile, the sap is running!  We (primarily Will) have been collecting sweet tree water and boiling it down to sticky goodness.  I think the last batch may get canned tonight.


We are actually getting some work out of them now!


Phew.  There is more of course but my energy is "sapped" (sorry couldn't resist the related pun).
Ta-ta for now; I have some knitting projects to share and some critter photos too for another day.