Matthew Turns 15

As if it wasn't hard enough to try to picture what our Matthew would have looked like as a little baby, or toddler or even a kindergartener, it's now ever harder to try to imagine him as a 15 year old. He's such a sweet part of our lives that I just mostly imagine him as being a gentle, kind and thoughtful 15 year old. Who is tall. With dark curly hair. But that could be totally wrong. It's ok. It doesn't even matter. I just love him, and love thinking about him. 

We changed up our plans a little bit this year. With all of the other activity going on, Chase working, Romney constantly at school, we did not have a lot of time to go get a picnic and pick out balloons, drive up to our little Matthew park and hang out for the evening. But of course we really wanted to keep the day as our special family holiday. I really like what we came up with. 

This time we stayed home. We of course picked out good food to enjoy, but we stayed home and ate it on the back porch. Then we lit our little campfire and gathered in a circle around it. Any time our family has the time and frankly the patience to just be together, to talk and laugh, it is so joyful for me. And that is the blessing that losing Matthew has brought to our family. He has given us a time and a reason to stick together, to be extra loving, to look ahead to the day when we don't have to imagine his face any more. I feel strongly that he spends as much time with us as we need him to. 

Instead of sending balloons off into the atmosphere with our notes dangling from their strings, we wrote our notes and then tossed them into the propane-fueled flames of the campfire. I was thinking it might be a little anticlimactic but it wasn't at all. It felt tender and thoughtful. And meditative. 

Of course we did finish the night with a box full of treats from Gourmandise Bakery. That's become our go-to. No more hit-or-miss mom cakes.

Matthew, I was wish you were here to be getting your learner's permit right now, and be getting ready for your sophomore year of high school. I wish you were here to bug your brother and share his room. You'd be taller than me by now, if you're anything like Chase. You'd probably be grumpy. But I still wish you were here. We know, however, that you are never far away, and are a part of our family forever. 

LeFou for the Win

Oh lands. Here's the other post that I never thought I'd get through. I still might not. This play took up so much time and energy in the Preslar family household that it's rather impossible to accurately relate. But I'll do my best.

Romney was pretty excited to audition for this play, and when she was cast in the part of LeFou, the villain Gaston's sidekick, she was thrilled. And so was I. It seemed like a perfect part. A great character role, but not one of the main characters. Some singing, but not so much that she would totally freak out. Well, that's what we thought, anyway. There was actually quite a bit of freaking out. Romney seems to go through a cycle when she's in a play. It can start with either total elation or complete devastation, depending on the role she was cast in. Then she comes to terms with it and starts to enjoy the rehearsal process. But then it gets overwhelming and she begins to regret ever having taken part at all, and dreads rehearsals and hates every second of it and tries to think of how she can quit. But then things come together, the play gets performed, and she flies up on the wings of her love of performing and she's on cloud 9 for a while. It's tough to keep up with.

This play had some extra angst for her because it was her first time having a solo part in a song. This was especially tough because the song was written for a male LeFou, thus in a lower register and she had to really soar to sing it which she did well. Also the rehearsal schedule was happening at the same time as competition season, and she often had rehearsal for the one-act play after a full afternoon of LeFou rehearsals. It was a lot.

One other little thing that took up a lot of time was the fact that I volunteered to help out with one day of costuming. I was told that a few parents were needed to come in and just distribute some costumes that had been rented. That did not sound like a very big deal. And it wouldn't have been if that had been true. It totally and completely was not. I don't want to get into the details except to say that the costumes needed major help and attention, and the fact that I showed up that one day alerted a couple of other moms that I might be coerced into joining the team. I did way way WAY less than they did, but I still found myself on the team helping with a lot of organizing, sewing, altering and fitting. It was crazy. It was also kind of fun. I did sewing things I didn't know I could do, like make ruffles and create pockets and sew sleeves out of tulle. The amazing costumes you see in these pictures were mostly rented, but I did a little bit and liked getting to know the mothers of both Beauty AND the Beast. And also Gaston. 

Also one little teeny tiny problem happened. After two performances with three to go....the Beast got covid. And so did Babette, Lumiere, and a bunch of other cast members. It was so sad. The play got shut down, and it was totally devastating. Covid will not just shut up and go away. I'm sick to death of typing the word. But there was a miracle - the director got permission from the licensing company as well as the costume rental places to postpone the final two performances for two weeks. Everyone recovered, the play started up again, and the kids put together two awesome performances. They did such a great job. Wonderful singing and acting. And man you should have seen the costumes. 

Romney followed her usual arc and was miserable to the point of tears regularly during rehearsals, but when the closing show happened, she was a big old teary mess because it was over. I didn't blame her. It was delightful.

Okay so there were like 500 pictures to choose from. I picked mostly photos that included Romney but threw a few others in there. It was magnificent.

Oh yeah, one last little story to relate. During the final performance, Romney's microphone wasn't working. Mr. Logan was in charge of the music directing, and was trying to help her get it all fixed before she had her solo. I'm not entirely sure what the whole story was, but there were a lot of laughs when I later heard about the ordeal that was dubbed "Logan's Run" since poor Mr. Logan had to sprint from back stage to the booth at the back of the auditorium two or three times to get her not one but two new mics, get them attached to her without time to remove the old ones, find a way to discretely run mic wires through her costume all within minutes of her solo starting. He totally saved the day. We bought him a Logan's Run t-shirt to commemorate his heroic adventure. And it was just in time. Her solo that night was the best of the run.

The Amazing Emma

What I was searching for a photo of was Emma and some kids she has been babysitting, but then I came across all of these fun photos from the springtime and just had to throw them in here. She's so cute. Springtime for Emma was filled with growing friendships, a true triumph for a seventh grader. It was filled with babysitting, which was a new challenge for her. Romney is not a babysitter. It's just not not something she enjoys, but Emma is taking to it quite well. At first I went with her just to make sure all was well if she needed help. I guess I have too many traumatic memories from my own early babysitting days of not knowing how to handle things. But slowly I helped her less and less and she has done several jobs all on her own. I'm so proud of her. Of course, those photos I was looking for were the ones I couldn't actually find!

Here she is during spirit week at school, on Decades Day - she made the cutest bobby soxer, wearing a skirt that she made herself.

Here she is just being adorable. 

Here she is with this totally adorable friend from our neighborhood. We went to go see Cinderella at a theater in Centerville. I love that play, and we got to sit in the front row.

I'll have to keep looking for the photo of her babysitting. She's doing a great job. Growing up through 7th grade is not life's easiest task. Just wanted to write a little love note to Emma!

Theater and Thinging Inthanity

The thought of writing this post has overwhelmed me into not blogging. Sometimes I just don't know how to describe or express a big event in life. And all blogging comes to a standstill. This is that post. 

Ok. So. Romney. It's clear, she's heavily involved in the theater department. And it's clear that she's also heavily involved in the music department. This has been true since the very beginning of her freshman year. However, there's something that I didn't know and wasn't prepared for. When covid started, it interrupted her freshman year, just before competition season started. I didn't even know really what competition season was, but it also didn't happen during her sophomore year either. So this was all new to me. I guess schools are put into districts and then regions for competitions in both music and theater, in several categories each. There are days when the kids go to be judged in their performances and if they do well in both district and region, they go on to the state level. And with Romney being a big part of both theater and choir..well....her schedule got absolutely crazy with performances. They were often during school itself, which I was not a huge fan of. We did much driving, and much waiting to go back home. I kind of hated it. Everything was just so busy. Oh yeah and that homework and practicing thing. Plus this was all going on while she was in rehearsals for the regular old spring musical at school, Beauty & the Beast, which I will blog about later.

Here's the thing, though. The kids did really really well. I'm quite disappointed I didn't get to see the performances - parents aren't allowed. I don't have photos or videos or anything. I especially wanted to see a pantomime she did with her friend Judd, which they had created two years before, but weren't able to take to competition then. So two years later they got to and I heard over and over how wonderful it was. People kept telling me that it was just wonderful and heart wrenching and made them cry. And dang it! I never got to see it! I think it was about a married couple aging together, set to the music from the movie Up. She was also in a one-act play written by a good friend, plus the choir.

I guess it was all pretty great though. The pantomime went to state and took 2nd place, plus Romney got the best character actress award or something like that. The one act play went to state and got an honorable mention, and her choir got the highest ratings possible. 

Basically, it was total insanity. All I have to show for it is this photo, which her friend took during school. It sums it all up perfectly.

The Big Dig

One of the things I really really wanted to do in the springtime was to better prepare our garden spots for the growing season. We kind of have two - both on the north side of the house, on either side of the fence between the front and back yards. The dirt there is pretty bad and besides was way to high above the borders of the plots. So I did some searching and found a company that would deliver a dumpster to our house and let us fill it up with dirt to a certain height and wasn't too pricey. So we ordered it up, and had a week to fill it up.

Here's the very depressing start:

Whelp...dirt is way heavier than you'd think. I dug. And dug. And dug. And carted it with the wheelbarrow over and over and over. It didn't feel like I made much of a dent. Troy pitched in when he could, and with his help we started making actual progress. We finally got the two plots pretty level and even were able to remove some of the dirt clear in the back of our yard on the east fence. There's a long way to go back there but, there is at least a dent. Chase was even coerced into helping us dig on our last day. 

Here's the funny part. I got a little mixed up between the depth of the dirt we were allowed to put in, and the weight of the dirt we were allowed to put in before we had to pay an additional charge. We definitely had to pay an additional charge. But hey, they took it away and it still cost less than I expected it to be when I first started looking. The amazing thing is that they told us how much dirt we had loaded into the dumpster. That would be SIX TONS, ladies and gentlemen. We moved six tons of dirt into that thing, and it was a little hard to tell where we had taken the dirt from. 

And the garden is better this year. Not great, yet. I think our dirt still needs a lot of love. But I did do some composting there as well as adding some soil pep. Next year we will add a LOT of soil pep and keep composting. (Yay for chickens!) Why do I love composting and making dirt happy? I don't know. But I do. We had some pretty sad looking tomatoes and the peas didn't do very well. But now that we have figured out a better watering system there are a few plants like pumpkins, tomatillos and a couple of the tomato plants that are going crazy. It's so much fun. I love gardening. I wish I was better at it.