Another Homecoming

 

Maddie went to a homecoming dance one more time tonight, and this time with a date!  Yes, she went with Nate the date.  It was his senior homecoming, and she was happy to come along for a very nice night in Flowery Branch.  Beforehand, they grabbed a bite to eat, and yes, there was this photoshoot too!

Just as the train came roaring past!

Here are a few pictures Maddie took from the dance tonight.  She had a wonderful time!

Oh, and pictures of dinner too...!

And meanwhile, here's a photoshoot I had with Mom!  

Okay, this was just while we were with Nate and Maddie for a bit downtown.  Afterwards, Mom and I didn't make it to the botanical gardens in time, but we did get some things done at home.  And we have some nice roses in the back yard right now anyway.  

Also Mom and I went to eat at Mellow Mushroom, which was packed tonight!  Big crowds and big wait time, especially at our table, but the food was good, and we tried an ice cream Sunday with a gluten-free brownie, and it was just delicious.  It was a leisurely paced meal, and that's just fine - we had a good time there. 

It was a good day today.  Maddie had her Team Edge practice this morning, and after that we were largely back at home getting ready for the dance, or just getting a few things done around the house.  Here's something that came in the mail:

This is for a skit tomorrow - we'll have six of these costumes for flowers, and it should be fun for a musical number.  You got to have Good Soil!  

I was shooting down juro spiders, as they're getting huge and out of hand around the house again.  The weather is getting cool outside, and it's just perfect.  We had a nice day today, and of course Maddie had a wonderful time tonight.  There were llamas at the homecoming dance.  Llamas!  Also, a few old friends from church that we hadn't seen in a while.  Maddie was quite tired when she got home, but we still made time to read a little, say our prayers, and then get to sleep quickly!

Camelot-athon Begins!

So here we are on April 25 again, the "perfect date."  It was a nice day with lots and lots of rain, and many different things going on.  For one, Mom and I were over at the chiropractor with a post-Easter adjustment.  We went to Cracker Barrel after that for a good meal, and that place was packed!  But we like shopping in the store there, and in fact Mom got a hat that she likes there with a butterfly on it.  Last time, I got a cap with "The Mystery Machine" on it from Scooby Doo.  We laugh because a good bit of our clothing comes from Cracker Barrel!  Anyway, Maddie was at school laboring away as always, and as I said, it's crunch time.  She's in somewhat of a perilous situation with one class grade wise, but otherwise, it's just a winding down time with a lot of effort getting across that finish line in just a short time.  Tonight she had taekwondo for a good bit, and she feels like the team is doing really well together, firing on all cylinders and getting things good.  Her kicks are getting better, and the team is gearing up for the big competition now in just a few months.  

We had more storms tonight.  Maddie was doing an economics project this evening, so Mom and I were starting our "research" for an upcoming theme at KidPak, related to castles and Excalibur and all that.  That being said, we started a "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" series of movies, which you'll be surprised at how many of those there are.  We're just watching four of them, the first tonight featuring Whoopi Goldberg as Sir Boss and Michael York as King Arthur.  

It's actually a fun movie, "A Knight in Camelot," although obviously made for television, produced with slots for the commercials to squeeze right in.  It's a fun movie though, and there were a few ideas in there that we might take with us into skits.  We'll see!  But we'll continue this "Camelot-athon" for a week or so with several other titles, and as a bonus, I've never actually seen the original "Camelot" before, so that will be fun to visit.  Oh, wouldn't it be great to revisit Medieval Times again?  Or go to the Renaissance Festival?  Another important question:  Why are these words so hard to remember how to spell?  Anyway, you can see the mode we're going into for June at KidPak, at least.

We did have time to read tonight, and of course we're reading about those vampires entering the Kingdom of Lancre, and addressing the mystery of where Esme Weatherwax has gone off to.  After that, we said our prayers and got some sleep.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter!  Today's the day, the big finish to a pretty immense weekend for us.  You can see this photo op for Mom and Maddie before the large amount of people are here at the campus.  We're here about two hours early today, but there's already a line outside, people lined up to get a seat in the sanctuary so they can see this massive production.

This morning, we were there getting everyone costumed for one more day, and still doing laundry.  That's a somewhat interesting thing about these productions.  There is a large amount of blood that gets on the clothing that Jesus wears, of course, and on the shroud and on the Romans in the vicinity of Jesus.  All this has to be either spot-cleaned, or put in the laundry.  Mom has wisely created alternate costumes for the alternating services, and meanwhile, we're down in the laundry room waiting for things to wash or dry off.  

Abby is someone that works for production, and she makes sure we all get really well fed.  She takes special care of Mom and Bill, our long-time pianist, who both have pretty special dietary needs.  She gets some grilled items and gluten-free items that are just perfect for breakfast.  Today after the second service there were chicken wings that were really tasty.

It was a long day, and first of all, here are some interesting pictures and videos from the day's services in the main sanctuary.  There are a few videos I took, the first one a short little sequence of Kevin, who plays the part of Jesus, seated on a donkey and ready to go out for the opening Palm Sunday number.

These above are photos from the church photographers.  It's easy to take a fantastic picture in that sanctuary because everywhere you look, it's just so well done on that stage.  Meanwhile, Maddie is still on the big screen at that opening number.  Just prior to Jesus walking out there, a video shows of crowds lining up to see Jesus, waving palms.  The camera lingers on Maddie just long enough to see her peek around with curiosity, and then brighten up at the approach of Jesus.  

One more video that you won't see in too many places.  It's the prep for Jesus.  Now all this time before he's even in the garden, Jesus is wearing elaborate make-up and scars beneath his costume.  As the Romans take him away, he has a very quick turn around where he gets bloodied and prepares to carry the cross on his back.  We have a video that shows the Romans and their cruelty, something we shot a month ago, and while that is going on, there's a super quick process back stage where Camille, Elizabeth, Josh, and Ansley quickly go to work, getting Kevin soaked and covered in blood. 

It's amazingly fast and efficient.  This team has been doing this for four years now, and have it down to precision.  Mom and I have been up there getting bloody items and delivering food to the team from time to time, but largely "the Bloody Buddies" have been in that room the whole weekend, and exhausting process, I'm sure.

Oh, and by the way, we still had KidPak this morning.  I was helping out with that somewhat.  I created this Wisenheimer skit, where kids would find out "what's in your Easter Basket" by way of our famous "biometric scanning device."

The cool factor today was that Maddie herself was operating the slides for the computer in the sound booth.  She was in the control seat helping out this morning, which was pretty awesome.

We had services at 9am, 11am, and then 3pm.  And then... we had clean-up time for a bit.  And then we just had to get home. It wasn't terribly late, but we were all very, very exhausted.  One more thing to do though:  Maddie had an Easter Egg Hunt at the house!

This was a Loki-themed Easter Egg hunt, where different Pop figures had different clues to give.  A few of them involved her looking up a particular date (time travel!) to see what was invented then, and when you knew what it was invented (a video game system?  A car?  A microwave?), then you knew where to find the next clue.  Each clue was wrapped like a scroll with a nice green ribbon, because Loki likes green.

Ultimately, the clues led right back to where things started, an ouroboros, and that's where Maddie found Sylvie's gift - a new sword! - and an Easter basket featuring many of the Funko Pop characters from the Loki series that she got clues from all along.  

She already had a Mobius and Loki and Alligator Loki too.  Now she has Sylvie, Ouroboros, Victor, Ravonna, and Miss Minutes.  Plus, she has some more Loki-themed coffee, some Loki pins, Season One of the "Loki," and a good bit of green plastic eggs, and green jelly beans.  Oh, and the one item we got about nine months ago:  a "Loki" movie poster.  Yeah, that was the last item ever from Disney Movie Rewards, and we finally opened it today.  We had it for Christmas when the thought occurred to us to do a Loki Easter basket.  So yes, we'll see Loki on Maddie's bedroom wall soon enough.  

But for tonight, episode one was just fine.  We popped that in... and that was all the energy we had for tonight.  We did some reading, and we said our prayers too.  It was quite a weekend though, wasn't it?