First Place!!!

Only three kids from our church's Bible quizzing team traveled to Ohio this past Friday for a quizzing event. Their coach accidentally forgot to register them, so they were unable to compete as a team as planned. Ian was placed on another team from Pennsylvania, and the girls (Nadia and Leila) joined The Branch's team (Indiana). That team won first place in the team competition. Ian earned 8th place in the written portion of the competition. Nadia and Leila tied for seventh place in the finals of the individual competition, and Ian won FIRST place in the individuals!!! Christopher was one of the top quizzers, and he graduated from high school last spring. Ben is typically one of the top quizzers, and he didn't attend this quiz. However, the boy who has won the individuals at the national competition the last few years was Simon, and he was there. Simon came in second to Ian. I was in shock when I found this out!!! Way to go, Ian!! Both Ian and Nadia showed improvement from past years. Here's to hoping that will continue over the next seven months! At this quiz they only covered all of Galatians plus the first two chapters of Ephesians. There will be a wider array of content at the Nationals as they are studying five epistles this year. 

On Thursday night we had our first performance of The Sound of Music. The final performance was sold out, and Saturday's matinee was also very close to being sold out. In general, all five performances went very well. One exception would be the first eight syllables of one song on Thursday night. We nuns sang a lot of our songs acapella, and we were split into two locations for one of the songs. We didn't use a pitch pipe on Thursday night, and that was a big mistake as we started in multiple different keys and sounded hideous for those first eight syllables until we all made it to the same key. Thankfully that never happened again! At every performance the two cast members who got the biggest response during the bows were for Mother Abbess and Gretl. Gretl was just so cute; she turned eight during the production. Mother Abbess has a powerful set of lungs! Maria also did an amazing job. She's our version of Julie Andrews as she also played Mary Poppins a few years ago. Yvonne and the rest of her family who live in Quito were able to watch a livestream of Thursday night's performance. Her son, Andrew, who is in college in Ohio watched the livestream on Friday night. I don't believe any of my relatives watched either of the two performances on Saturday. Paul, the kids, Paul's dad, Cheri, and Tab all came to see the performance on Sunday afternoon. The first photo in this post is of everyone involved in the production - backstage crew, cast, directors, sound technicians, etc. 

In general, we brought our own meals when our rehearsals were long, but on Saturday a meal was provided in between our two performances. If I had been at someone's home and they served chicken and waffles, I. would have eaten it to be polite. In this case I opted to bring a bean burrito, but I did eat the delicious dessert they provided. I like waffles, and I like chicken, but the thought of mixing the two is repulsive to me, especially when gravy is involved as I don't like gravy on anything. The other time they provided food was last night. Pizza, veggies, and chips were available to eat after the show because we were expected to stay and help clean up the rooms we used, tear down the set, put away the props, etc. Last night was the first night in a week that I was able to go to bed prior to 11pm. It was so nice to go to bed at 9:30! Despite the fact that I got to bed at an earlier hour, it was still a long day as I left for church at 8:40 am and didn't come back home from church until 8:20 pm. I have a whole new appreciation for all that goes into putting on a musical!

I'm the one walking across the balcony in this scene.

It was very strange to only homeschool one child on Friday. In addition to doing his schoolwork, he and I worked on a Spiderman jigsaw puzzle that he had received for his birthday but hadn't put together yet. On Saturday afternoon Paul took Oliver to a Stronghold (foam sword fighting) competition that lasted for three hours and included time for a devotion plus some Minecraft competitions. On Saturday morning I made a casserole that Paul and Oliver had for dinner on Saturday night, and he and all three kids had it on Sunday night.