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. 

Romney's Disney-rific Adventure

The 2021-22 school year was plenty busy already, believe me. But things seemed to reach a new level just in time for the 4th quarter of the year. It started with a trip for Romney and her madrigals choir. The choir teacher, someone I’ll call Mr. Logan, is a great teacher. He’s the most dedicated choir teacher either of my girls have had, and though he’s very young (when asking what year I was in a choir at the UofU, I had to reveal to him that it was the same year he was born), he’s very serious about creating a quality program, being taken seriously, participating in the community, and carrying on traditions that have been around at EHS for a long time. So he reinstated the spring Madrigals trip to California to participate in a competition and also go to the beach and Disneyland. When I was at EHS, the trip was for the entire a'cappella choir, which was much bigger than the little madrigals group Romney is a part of. I didn’t go, since I wasn’t a part of the choir. Talk about major left-out-itis. All my friends were away. And I was home alone for the whole spring break. But…I digress.

Romney’s trip didn’t take place during spring break. My guess is because with it being such a small group going, family vacations might take away too many of the students during the actual break. So instead, they took off on the Wednesday after break and got back on Sunday night. 

I had actually volunteered to go on this trip as a chaperone. It sounded pretty fun to be a part of. I don’t think Romney was particularly excited about that idea though. (When I say ‘particularly’ I mean ‘definietly totally was not’.) Mr. Logan let the parents know that too many of us were willing to go and he needed some of us to opt out. I declined my spot, but I don’t think Mr. Logan got the message. I was later on the list of chaperones even though I had made other plans to take Emma to St. George to see her cousin in a play. I was sad to turn it down! Romney was not sad. At all. 

We got her all packed up and took her to the school on Wednesday evening around 9, and she set off on quite the adventure. I really should have her write about it because of the fact that I wasn’t there. But that is not something that will happen, so I’ll summaraize as well as I can. 

Here are the highlights I can remember:

* I think her night on the bus was rather terrible. 

* The first day was a beach day and then dinner at Medeival Times that night, where the kids enjoyed wearing paper crowns, watch hot guys pretend to be knights fighting in a jousting tournament, and telling the announcer that Mr. Logan was celebrating his 30th birthday that day (even though he wasn’t and is in fact only 36). 

* The Next day was a morning spent in the choir and orchestra competitions in Los Angeles, and Romney said it was a little crazy but they felt good about their performances. 

* That afternoon the group went to California Adventure where Romney discovered that she adores rollercoasters and had an absolute ball running around with a huge group of friends and her teacher. She felt like people did a great job of including each other, and the cirlces of kids kind of ebbed and flowed into each other. She loved loved loved it and they stayed late into the night.

 

 

* The final day was spent entirely at Disneyland, where Romney hasn’t been since she was 5 or 6. She adored every moment of it, especially watching her friend Max nearly weep when he was finally able to eat a much-longed-for creamcheese-filled pretzel. Her madrigals group of friends bonded more than ever. Romney loved Disneyland so much that she later declared to me that she was going to be a Disney-Adult, even to the point of wanting to go there with just herself and her Aunt Sheri, the official Disney-Maniac. 

* Best moment of the day -Romney was in line for I think the Thunder Mountain Railroad and she saw in line behind her a man wearing a button down shirt that was the same print as the swim trunks she brought with her on the trip. After being dared by her friends, she gathered up her courage, and just as she was about to get onto the ride she asked the man how much money it would take for her to buy the shirt off of his back. Turns out it was $25. She gave him the cash, got his shirt (luckily he had a shirt underneath it), put it on, hopped on the ride, and zoomed away and laughed her head off for the rest of the day. 

 

* Actual best moment of the day - there was a ceremony in the evening for all of the participants in the competitions to hand out awards and such. The EHS orchestra did well and I think got 3rd place in their category. The EHS madrigals did even better and got first place in theirs! It was very exciting. But the excitement wasn’t done. At the end of the ceremony a special award was given out, sort of like a “best in show” type award. I just remember getting a phone call while I was in St. George. It was from Romney, and when I answered the phone, all I could hear was a lot of screaming. Then Romney, who was basically sobbing, gushed out, “Mom! We won the whole competition and we are going to New York!!” Then she hung up. Needless to say, I was anxious for more information. So basically, the EHS madrigals choir did win the overall gold medal award, which was a huge honor. (Yay for Mr. Logan!) And there is an available trip to New York. HOWEVER, it’s not like an all-expenses-paid trip. No, it’s like an opportunity to join the next level of competition sometime in the next school year, and will cost like 3 times as much as this trip did so it will probably not happen. But still, it was pretty exciting. 

* Sunday was a long day of travel, and the bus didn’t pull up infront of EHS until 10:30 or so, which made the next day of school a very bleary one for our daughter. But it seemed totally worth it. The trip was one of those things that high school memories are based on, and I’m happy to say that Romney seemed to love hers, to grow even closer to some wonderful friends, and to recognize in herself the love of roller coasters and the wonderful world of Disney. 

Epilogue - Romney's friend Daffodil heard about the choir's exciting win, and in her honor, made her this cake. Isn't she the cutest?

I Vaguely Recall What Blogging Is

I vaguely remember blogging. Long long ago, before my ability to keep up with life came to a crashing halt late in the month of March when the activities of my children became so intense that all I could do was try to tread the waters of life. Forget about writing about anything. Just keep swimming. And swimming. And swimming. I look to Dory as my spirit animal/role model. 

This kind of non-blogging has happened before. Many times before. Sometimes to catch up I have blogged a lot all at once and then backdated the posts so it looks like I have been keeping up just fine. And other times I do what I’m about to do. Commit myself to two solid days of writing, leaving the dates as-is so anyone can tell that I’m playing a marathon game of catch-up. This is going to be fun. I’m sure my memory of all the events of the past six or so months will be perfectly intact and I’ll have a lot of creative ways to express how busy everything as felt. I’m sure of it.