One Week Late, Countless Dollars Short

LAST weekend was the super-intense-everything-happening-in-one-weekend weekend. It's taken me a week to recover and get the photos/videos together.

Friday night was the World Premier and Grand Finale of our pirate play (written by my good friend Melynda Kiring) "Yo Ho Ho". We've been working on it all semester, and the kids were just frazzlin' AWESOME! Max especially rose to the occasion as Captain Johnny Goodfellow Stanton, as did his leading lady who played Melch. Here is my little ham. . .



. . . and here is the cast . . .


I was so proud of them I could have peed. And plotzed. Simultaneously. AK spent a day and a half putting that vest together for him, and she also got the PAC to buy swords, eyepatches, earrings and a couple of hats to help with costumes. Mad props goin' out to my main sho'ty A-Kizzle.

We rushed from this performance to the church lip synch. Max and I had put together a Blues Brothers routine, but with this play and his recital to prep for we just didn't have time to perfect it. The lip synch was a total blast, and while a couple of acts were highly polished, our bumbling Blues Brothers would have fit right in. Oh well, we'll be really really ready for next year's lip synch.

About that time, our good friends the W's from VT dropped in for the night. Awesome. They make the most adorable little red-headed dolls of daughters. Maybe if Mr. McDaddy W reads this he'll forward me a photo or two of the kids all in the backyard? The Internet has to see the cutefest that is our 4 littles. As much as I cringe when ALL the 6th grade girls go "AWWWWWW!!!" every time Ben or Milo says something? When Littlest Peanut W says anything, no need to be cuter than "That'sthe vaccuum cleaner"? Guess what I do. Yeah.

Then Saturday was the big big piano recital. And HOO did it go well! We were all anxious for Max. This in addition to his own usually overwrought-but-in-this-case-perfectly-appropriate performance anxiety. He'd long ago mastered his two smaller pieces for the recital (though he paused & stumbled once at the recital, see below. . .). But Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk" was way beyond his skill level. We didn't know this when we recommended it to him and his teacher last year. She didn't know either when she agreed to it, looking only at the first page or two of music. But then it digresses into a funky jazz piece with dissonance & stuff. He's worked so hard on it for so long, taking breaks when necessary from over-working it and losing perspective. It's also a very long piece. But by recital time he had it totally memorized and I hear he'd had a few good complete rehearsals. I hadn't heard any. That and the fact that he took deep "OK I survived that, now lets see if I can live through the next one. . . ) sighs after each of his first two pieces -- had me a little edgy.

But that boy of mine; the talented one? The one who makes music? Nailed it. Never have I heard it go so well so consistently. It's long, you may not want to watch/listen to the whole thing (though the ending is good, different than your usual Suzuki piece, and the audience got it wrong. . .). But AK and I were just balling through the whole thing and he knew he did the best he ever had and he was so proud of himself!

Here is Ben doing "Horse Sense". . .

Here is Milo doing "Love Somebody" but only at about 50%. He hasn't been as consistent as Ben lately in piano . . .

I'll only post the video of Max's final piece, Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk". But know that his 2nd piece was strewn with feeling and the "lyrical style" his teacher loves so much. . .

*sniff*

Between that weekend and this weekend, AK started her new job, I had a biz trip to Baltimore, we had a Scout Court of Honor, Max's school got a new playground, I got to play raquetball a couple of times, and the W's dropped in again. Oh yeah, we got our Honda mower back and mowed Gramma's 40-acre yard, then a truck dumped some dirt on a tarp on our lawn. And my wife was so excited about that that she used a relatively fancy camera to document it and post numerous photos of the dumping on her blog. And Hillary won the PA primary, making my wife very happy. And some other stuff. Big week, actually.

And this evening was our first raucous, righteous thunderstorm of the year. Thank you so much, Pennsylvania.