Amigos en El Sombrero

Job lives in Grand Forks, ND; Allison lives in Minneapolis, MN; and we have been friends with them for years since when we all lived in the Grand Cities. They're spending the summer in southwest ND to perform in the musical in Medora, so we've seen them a few times when we've attended their performances (remember this and this?). But we figured a social occasion was in order, so we arranged to meet them for dinner today in Dickinson, to which they come regularly to use the West River Community Center. We had a tasty meal at El Sombrero, a terrific Mexican restaurant that filled us up and tolerated us as we talked and laughed too loudly and stayed long after the plates were empty. The girls had colored pictures and made greeting posters for Job and Allison, so those had to be distributed and oohed and awed over, and hugs had to be meted out, and plans had to be made to do this again (next week, in fact--this time with Thai take-out), and photos had to be posed for. It's always so good to see old friends (not implying that they're "old" friends, of course).

Hillary, Job, Suzanna, Abigail, Susan, and Allison

Badlands Redux

We're whores for Medora. When friends or family come to visit, we take them to Medora and get them caught up in the tourism industry that is that town. Medora gets their money and has us to thank. But we always get a great experience, so we don't mind being volunteer tourism recruiters (is that better than the whore/pimp analogy?).

This afternoon we drove to Medora to meet yet another set of friends for The Medora Experience: Jesse, Nicole, and their kiddos. Now, Susan and I have an unnatural tendency to turn things into delightful surprises for our daughters, so we keep many pleasant things secret until the last moment. One notable example was the trip to DisneyWorld, of course. Recently they were asked to be gift attendants in a wedding, and we didn't mention that until we were on the road en route to the wedding! Why? Dunno, really. Anyhoo, we kept secret that we had guests arriving at all, but the girls' piano teacher let that slip; Susan had to reschedule their lessons from today to yesterday and told the teacher the reason why, so the teacher told our girls to enjoy their company. "Company? What company?!"

Oh, well. We didn't tell them who the company was, so at least that was a surprise. We brought the girls to the Medora Children's Park with its awesome playground, and while they were playing, Jesse and Nicole arrived and sent their kids in to find our kids. It was cute to see our daughters' looks of surprise and to watch all the kids hug one another and jump into playing without skipping a beat. Visiting with Jesse and Nicole happened much the same way: as though no time had passed at all since we last saw them. It's good to have them here.

After some time in the playground, we wrangled the kids over to the patio dining area outside the Chuckwagon Buffet downtown. Late Wednesday afternoons, performers from the Medora musical are there to sing with kids, teaching them songs and movements and getting them up and on their feet and moving around. While the kids were making their way onto some shaded lawn with the performers, we heard an approaching woman say, "May I take your order?" We turned to see not a server but . . . (wait for it) . . . our "long-lost" friend Allison Mickelson, whom we haven't seen in a couple years and with whom we had lost touch! She is an energetic, outgoing, caring person who's a great singer, dancer, performer, and choral director (she directed our children in the choir at our former church) (and Jesse and Nicole know her, too, making for a full-scale reunion for our group), and it was an awesome surprise to encounter Allison there. Many hugs ensued.

Abigail is holding Mya.

Suzanna, McKenna, and Hillary all are seated together.

Ethan opted to sit out the sing-along/dance-along event, but he quickly made friends with some other boys nearby!

Allison, Susan, and Nicole beam at the surprise reunion of dear friends!

But what was Allison doing there? One of the Medora musical performers had earlier injured herself and had to step down from the show, and our friend Job (also in the cast) suggested that the producers contact Allison (also his friend) as a possible replacement. She got the phone call last week Tuesday, arrived in Medora Friday, learned the music and choreography over the weekend, and had her debut performance tonight! Talk about high stress!! Now after the show, I can attest that she did a fabulous job. Knowing the circumstances of her past several days, we were amazed at how flawlessly she danced and sang.

Here are both Allison (in the orange shirt) and Job (in the purple tie) in the same number. (Trivia: Allison must be similar in size to the cast member whom she's replacing, or else the company seamstresses were very efficient in refitting the costumes for Allison. Area to work on: the hats. They kept falling down on Allison's face and covering her eyes. Might want to fix that; spontaneous blindness is a safety hazard for a dancer!)

After the kids' sing-along had ended, we bumped into Susan's aunt and uncle Patty and Buddy and visited with them a while before heading across the street to the Badlands Pizza Parlor for supper. After consuming a couple tasty pizzas, we crossed the street again and walked over to De Mores Memorial Park where the children played and ran around while the adults visited. Then we all drove to the Burning Hills Amphitheatre to browse the welcome center (featuring souvenirs as well as information on the history of the Medora musical), pose for photos against the backdrop of the beautiful Badlands, and visit with other members of our church also there for the show, and find our seats. After a hot day, it was a beautiful night--warm, slightly breezy, and perfect for watching the performance. All of our kids except for Ethan went on stage for the "Come and join us for this number, kids!" song, and they all returned after the show to get the autographs of the performers standing at the foot of the stage for that purpose.

Buddy and Patty and their great-nieces Abigail, Hillary, and Suzanna.

The statue of the Marquis de Mores (founder of Medora) that stands in the memorial park. In the pic below, the kids are gathered on the opposite side of the base of this statue.

Taking a break are Hillary, Abigail, Mya, Ethan, McKenna, and Suzanna.

Overlooking the Badlands at the entrance above the Burning Hills Amphitheatre, the kids gathered for a group shot: Abigail, Ethan, McKenna, Suzanna, Hillary, and Mya.

Cute little Mya got a brief tote on my shoulders! Isn't she sweet?

The madness of the number during which all the children in the audience are invited to join the performers on stage!

Can you spot a few of the kids from our group? (At the end of this number as the children are filing back up the aisles to their seats, one of the performers always tells the audience, "And remember: if you brought two, you have to take home two.")

After providing autographs for the kids (and hugging and re-hugging them), Allison posed with them.

Job, too, got his share of hugs and doled out the autographs before posing for photos. (McKenna knows him as her dance teacher back home!)

They had a good time tonight and fell asleep almost immediately when we loaded into the vehicles for the ride home. I rode home with Jesse in their vehicle, and Nicole rode with Susan in ours so that the adults could visit, too. We gave them a quick tour of our house when we got back to Dickinson, but after a long day--and lots of driving for Jesse and Nicole--we shooed everyone into bed and look forward to more fun and visiting tomorrow.

Good Friday Service

There was lots of crying at tonight's Good Friday service at Calvary Lutheran Church in Grand Forks, ND. Pastor Roger Dykstra, our new head pastor, brought this particular service with him from his previous church, and I gotta say: the man gives good church. All the windows of the sanctuary were covered in black cloth, and the lights were dimmed. They kept getting dimmer, and the candles were progressively extinguished, with each section of the service. Each section had to do with another part of Jesus' route toward death on the cross and consisted of a beautiful overview by Pastor Roger to introduce the reading of the accompanying Bible verse, which led into a singing of the "Agnus Dei" and a prayer . . . and another set of candles extinguished. Eventually, the church was dark except for a spotlight on one of the wooden panels above our altar--the panel that reads, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" Chilling.

The gradual movement into darkness and the hushed, contemplative tone to the readings and prayers were highlighted by the choice of music for the night. Several soloists, the choir, and a trio sang songs related to the events surrounding Jesus' death on the cross. The choir sang a song called "Agnus Dei" that featured our friends Kevin and Katie Brandt as soloists (and they did a good job). It pulsed with steady, surprising, and moody chord changes and was very moving. Our friend Allison Brooks sang a solo called "Why?" that left Abigail--sitting with me and Suzanna and Hillary in the pew (Susan was with the choir in the loft)--in tears. (She rested her head on Suzanna's shoulder, and Suzanna dabbed Abigail's eyes with a tissue--SO SWEET!!) The narrator of "Why?" is a little girl excited to ride beside her dad. They see Jesus being crucified, and she wonders why it's happening. By the end of the song, we get Jesus' perspective as he asks his Father why he himself must do this (die on the cross). God tells him to look at the little girl; she is the reason He must die. Allison captured the little girl's innocence perfectly and has such a gorgeous voice.

The final song, the trio's "Rise Again", had me in tears because the woman singing the low part sounded so much like Mom! I sat and wept quietly with my eyes shut in an effort to calm myself. Then I felt little fingers wiping tears away from my eyelashes and a tissue dabbing at my eyes. That made me cry all the more. People left the church in silence, authentically moved by the seriousness and sadness of the service. Pastor Dykstra certainly has a sense for the performance aspect and ritual of "church," and he capitalizes on it. Awesome experience.

A Tropical Island in February

Many, many moons ago in college (undergrad), my friend Theresa wrote a parody of Little House on the Prairie in which the kids put on a pageant at school and Pa cries proudly at the drop of a hat all throughout the play. I felt like Pa this week when Susan and I attended Valley Middle School's production of Once on This Island, Jr., their annual musical, at the Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks, ND. Our three daughters were recruited by the director Allison Brooks to participate, although they are neither middle school students nor Grand Forks students. Suzanna played young TiMoune at the beginning, a young girl hearing the story at the beginning and retelling it at the end, and a little girl who meets Daniel's son while playing in TiMoune's tree at the end. Abigail and Hillary played young girls hearing the retelling of the story from Suzanna at the end.

When Suzanna, as a frightened child at the beginning, put her face in her hands and sobbed, I started to tear up. When she sang her lines, I teared up. When she spoke her lines at the end with impeccable diction and clarity, I teared up. When Abigail and Hillary joined the other listeners gathered at Suzanna's feet at the end to hear her retell the story, I teared up. I was even proud of all the middle schoolers in the cast, and I don't know any of them! It was a fun production of a great show, and I'm so glad the girls were able to participate.

One of the best parts was seeing all the creative cast gifts made by crafty kids and their parents and left out for cast members to take. So many of them had a tropical island theme. Two of my favorites? The boy who played Agwe [AH-gway], the god of water, covered water bottles with "Agwefina" [Aquafina] labels. Another student hot-glued popsicle sticks to cans of Fanta orange pop so that, reading the can, one would see "Fanta" stick [fantastic].

What a blast!

Recent Miscellany RE: Daughters

• While eating a sub sandwich the other day, Suzanna had the experience of biting into the bread and having the meat, cheese, etc., pop out the opposite end of the bread while she bit. She told me that the "insidings" were coming out.
• A few weeks ago, Suzanna was working on a music theory exercise as part of her practice for piano lessons. I came home to find her pondering her theory book at the piano. She asked me for help, saying, "What are 'two-inds'?" Not knowing what "two-inds" were, I asked her to show me in the theory book. The page was teaching her about steps on the keyboard--particularly 3rds and 2nds, the latter of which she pronounced as "two-inds."
• I came home from work last week to hear the girls engaged in much activity in the basement. I went downstairs and found the furniture pushed to the walls and Suzanna and Abigail in shorts and sleeveless T-shirts, wrestling! They were reenacting what they had seen the high school wrestlers doing days earlier. Hillary was involved, too. Her older sisters had given her one of their pink alarm clocks--with a second-/minute-/hour-hand face that she can't yet read--and told her to keep track of two-minute intervals (the time allowed in each round of high school wrestling). Hillary was also to get down on the floor (as the ref had done at the high school match) and check to determine whether one sister had indeed pinned the other's shoulders flat on the floor, and, if so, to call the victory for her. They were having a blast.
• All three girls will perform in the musical Once on This Island (Junior) with Valley Middle School in Grand Forks, ND next week at the Empire Arts Center. The director asked Abigail and Hillary to play children (what else?) needed at the end of the play, and she asked Suzanna to play the younger version of a main character. Suzanna has lines and appears throughout the play, so she attends a few more rehearsals than her sisters. They're all excited, however, and seem to enjoy working with the middle schoolers and the production team. (The director works at our church and is a family friend, but she's the only person they really knew before joining the cast.)