Monday, April 16, 2018

We're Eating Seaweed

In the words of Ms. Shannon, Nora has been "KILLING IT" as assistant director at Play-in-a-Day lately. She's been giving great notes, helping everyone with their character development, and coming up with all sorts of ideas. Today's camp had a sea theme, the plot of the play wasn't entirely clear, something about all the fish going missing, and there was a detective that figured out everyone was eating all the fish, and some dolphins got mad. Then Nora showed up as a pirate with two eye patches, and of course lots of physical comedy ensued. During rehearsal, when Ms. Shannon asked how they should wrap up the play, Nora cried out, "song & dance number, and jazz hands!" Of course Nora being Nora, she wrote a whole song, choreographed it, and taught the entire class.
When you're sick of fish,
You can always make a dish,
Made out of seaweed,
We're eating seaweed.

Sunday, April 15, 2018

String Queen

For the Spring Open House, DC Youth Orchestra had regular ensemble practice, plus yoga, face painting, a performances of Peter and the Wolf as well as the String Queens, a trio helmed by Nora's (and Owen's former) conductor, cellist Elsie Cuffy.

After playing Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, Earth, Wind & Fire's September, Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely, and a few others, the Queens invited all the students on stage to play Pachelbel's Canon. While Owen had left his cello at home, Nora had just finished practice and had her viola conveniently with her, so she happily ran on stage and joined the crowd. It was pretty epic.

 

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Melody in Spring

There wasn't a Fall concert at Stuart Hobson, so we had to wait until April to hear Owen play with the orchestra. While the Stuart-Hobson band has dozens of players (and the chorus must have at least 40), there are currently only twelve strings (seven from the sixth and seventh grade orchestra; five from the eight grade -- they've lost a few due to some ill-scheduled math classes). Since the two orchestras don't normally all play together, they only had one afternoon to rehearse in full. It was a bit rough at times, but they managed to pull off Scottish Fiddle Medley, William Tell Overture, and Owen finally got to fully emote before an audience to music from Les Miserable. (Not to mention joining the band in its finale, My Shot).

Sunday, April 01, 2018

Easter 2018

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We went up at Katherine & Lee's house for a Final 4 party on Saturday with Mom & Don, Nancy & Danny, and Makayla. We spent the night, and Katherine even set up the new 'Tool Suite' for dad as a fourth guest room. On Sunday we went over to Mom & Don's for Easter dinner, and the kids all had another fun Easter Egg hunt, and Makayla found the Golden Egg, with the big prize, a Star Wars puzzle that I think all the kids will get to help put together over in Katherine & Lee's puzzle room :-)

Easter also happened to be on April 1st this year, so the kids planned a big April Fool's Day prank for Aunt Katherine. Originally they were scheming to pour out all of her hot sauces and replace them with fish sauce, but after a little discussion about nice pranks and mean pranks, they modified the plan to make new 'fishy labels' for her hot sauce collection. They barricaded the door to the tool room, and created a number of diversion art works to account for their time and cover their tracks, then snuck up to steal the hot sauces, affix the new labels, and replace them all before bedtime. In the morning, Katherine made some avocado toast that really needed hot sauce, and she was surprised to find instead, "BBQ with a hot new twist, Anchovies!", "Ala Angelfish," "Salmon Malaganese," "A 'Fishy' Substance, Extra Meaty," "Ariel's Conquest," "A new world's fish with bright garlic undertones," and "Salsa Verde Para Pesces."

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(click here for all the pictures)