Plays, Legos, and Holidays

The last few weeks have been very hectic. I had planned a nice relaxed schedule the beginning of this year, but things never go as planned. Thankfully, our time-sinking activities have all come to a close within 2 weeks of each other. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself yet. I'm sure I'll fill my schedule soon enough though.

Updates...

My kids went to the FLL (First Lego League) State Championship on Dec 14th. Being a rookie team, their participation was a complete shocker. They did great and earned a 2nd place in "Creative Presentation". That really pleased my daughter, who wrote the skit for the play. I don't have a pic of the trophy, but do have a pic from mid-presentation where strawberries come to life and tell dreaming scientists the solution to their problem. My son is on the far left. Notice the interesting hair-do of the only girl on the team? That is because she had a play performance the same day and we had to leave mid-competition for her role of Amy in Little Women. It seemed that the schedule was going to work out fine, as the competition powers-that-be accommodated our request for a morning schedule. However, we later discovered that the team was called back to present again for finals. That was problematic because she had most of the lines. Another team member played dual roles and all worked out fine.

While being involved in Little Women was a wonderful experience, it was the biggest time sink of all, especially the last two weeks. Rehearsals built their way up to six hours long and the last week involved seven performances. I felt it was "all about the hair" because my main job was to make stick-straight, waist-long hair into ringlets. The hairspray brand Got 2 B Glued was my best friend that week. Overall, the experience was awesome for my daughter and she was very sad when it was all over. She loved working with the all adult professional actors and actresses and they treated her just like one of them. Below are pics of the sisters in a play acting scene with Laurie and the scene where Amy (my dd) shares how she got in trouble over pickled limes. The performances are shadow interpreted with ASL, which is very interesting to watch. One of the interpreters is standing behind dd in the pickled limes scene.


Christmas is always a wonderful time of the year. It was more hectic than usual this year, but we had a very relaxing Christmas day as a family. I hope yours was just as memorable!