For the past several weeks, I’ve been trying to make time to publish blog posts. I have several ideas – a recap of Sarah Kate’s year in virtual school, an honest post about what middle school was like for her as a student with cerebral palsy, a discussion about VBS 3.0 (yep, we went back one more time), the amazing theater opportunity she had recently, and a few others. But summer is kicking my booty so you’ll have to wait a little longer.
Instead, I’ll share with you what we’ve been doing since the end of school one month ago.
Sarah Kate performed in her voice teacher’s year-end vocal showcase and she ROCKED it. The talent pool was amazing, and although she has a lovely voice, she’s not the most experienced vocal student. She made up for any lack of training with a spot-on rendition of “Taylor the Latte Boy”. If you’ve never heard the song, you can see Kristen Chenowith performing it here. She entertained the crowd, for sure.
The weekend after school ended, Mr. Andi took Sarah Kate and a friend to MobiCon. It was our family’s first experience with a comic con, but it won’t be our last. MobiCon was pretty small, but we’ve heard that PensaCon is a lot bigger and higher profile. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I got a new recliner earlier this year for my birthday, and wisely opted to cover it with an afghan for an extra level of dirt and stain protection. It is a favorite hangout for the boy and the dogs, unfortunately.
Now that her activities have slowed down (a little), Sarah Kate is back to singing karaoke most weeks. She just finished week three of an eight-week long kids’ karaoke contest.
Mr. Andi took the kids to the Tennessee Valley Lineman Rodeo, where Nathan learned to climb power poles.
At least he thought he knew how. And when there was no one around to help him, he grabbed a tool belt and set off.
Not far away from the rodeo, Mr. Andi’s family was having a reunion and guess who was there? Baby Megan! Of course, she’s no longer a baby – she’ll turn five later this summer. Five years ago, Megan’s parents picked out a cemetery for her final resting place; two weeks ago, Sarah Kate did Megan’s nails and read books to her, and they played hide-and-seek. If you don’t know Megan’s story, start here.
At the beginning of the summer, Sarah Kate learned that she had been awarded an “Up-and-Coming” scholarship to participate in summer theater programs.
A portion of the award went toward a workshop production of the musical, Heathers 101: High School Edition. The show is brand new – the world premiere was actually the week after their workshop performances – and it was a great opportunity for Sarah Kate to work with an amazing director. I’ll have more on her Heathers experience in a future post (hopefully with some thoughts straight from the horse’s mouth).
And good news – Nathan is no longer a VBS dropout! It took three tries, but this year he made it all the way to the end of the week. I have lots of thoughts about VBS that I’ll share at a later date. Promise.
Hooray!
Would love to learn more of your Heathers experience, Sarah Kate. And of course the cons.
And climbing power poles – it is an accomplishment.
Did you have a great time at Vacation Bible School this week, Nathan? You and the dogs pretty much own/rock the afghan.
Thank you for the encounter with Megan.
Andi,
Sounds like everyone is doing very well. And that photo of Nathan in lineman garb is priceless, future electrician. Sarah Kate keeps on being herself. Sarah Kate and Nathan are enjoying life. My life’s been active and busy, and two residences today, and lots of PT, wheelchair sports, a new chair, and movement I can enjoy. And enjoying my Birthday Car, the Volvo got retired, I now drive a Ford Taurus Wagon (and helped install hand controls on it with a friend, 4 days of adventure, and lots of learning).
I love hearing about her theatre experiences! The theatre I work for is doing Heathers the high school version as well this year. I am still so perplexed about HOW they make that show high school appropriate (not enough to actually read the script though! I guess I’ll just see when it’s staged)
HA! I understand. We were very wary about the show, but just could not pass up the opportunity to work with such an amazing director. I haven’t seen the original musical (only the movie both are based on), but here’s a quick synopsis of what’s different based on what I do know. If you’ve seen the movie, most of the bad stuff is spoken, not visual (excepting, of course, the deaths and even those aren’t gory or gratuitous). The language is toned way down from both the musical and the movie (and the song “Blue” from the musical has been removed), but it’s still decidedly a PG-13 show. Sarah Kate and I watched the movie together before auditions so she could get a feel for the tone and characters, and although there were parts that made me uncomfortable, she told me the language was no worse than a lot of what she heard in middle school. Mr. Andi had never seen the musical OR the movie, so we all watched the movie after the fact and the movie’s language was no doubt worse than the high school edition of the musical. I also felt like the story in the musical was better – not quite as dark and seemed to make a bit more sense.