Christian has been increasingly involved in the drama program over the last few years. In ninth grade, he played two roles in the spring play, The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon: an elf and the devil (lol). In tenth grade, he portrayed Cassius in Julius Caesar. At this point, the drama teacher recognized something special in Christian and began pushing him and encouraging him to reach his full potential. Eleventh grade brought him the honor of playing Macbeth. He took this challenge seriously and put a great deal of time into learning his lines and doing what he could to become this complex character. The spring of that year, he brilliantly portrayed the hare in a retelling of the tortoise and the hare, The Great Cross-Country Race. Through all of these roles, he grew and stretched and matured. This year, his senior year, Hamlet has been the culminating experience of Christian's high school drama experience. The spring play will likely be a more light-hearted and family-friendly play, so Hamlet will remain the cherry on top of his high school resume. 

I wish I could express how excellently these students handled Shakespeare. Everyone did so well. I'm so proud of Christian and his commitment to excellence. It's so fun to watch your kids do something they love and to do it so masterfully. I am sure you would say I'm biased, but I think his performances were exceptional. I would go so far as to say that he gave any other Hamlet a run for his money. I cannot wait to see where this passion takes him. I cannot wait to see how Christian's story unfolds.

The queen watching a play that Hamlet has arranged for his mother and his uncle's (now his stepfather) "entertainment" ... and upon his questioning if she likes it, she replies, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Hamlet taunts his uncle, Claudius, with riddles about Polonius' burial. "At supper." "At supper? Where?" "Not where he eats, but where he is eaten."

Hamlet and Laertes begin their duel with Hamlet under the impression that they are competing to see who will reach three hits first. Laertes and Claudius have a plan to kill Hamlet, however, and the fight escalates to a true swordfight which leads to the tragic end of the play.

As he lies dying, Hamlet asks his friend Horatio, "...draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story."

What a story. Beautifully told.

We each got a tie, and he copied what I did; of course, he's watched me do it many times and pretty much knew what to do. He practiced multiple times: the first time was good, the second time was wonky, and the next two tries were off too. He finally got it right again, lengthwise.

He took the tie off and started to head out of my room. "Thanks for teaching me how to tie it," he said as he paused in the doorway. "Thanks for letting me do it for you for so long." He grinned.

He's happy, and I like making him smile. You could say it's a tie. 

Five years! 

We've experienced surgery, a big move, a new school, painful waiting, and new jobs. We've had sweet family moments, challenging family moments, and hilarious family moments. We are anticipating one of the biggest changes for our family of five that we've ever been through: Michaela is graduating from high school.

I have tears ready to pour even as I type this. How did we get here so fast? Where did the years go? What am I going to do without my girl?

Of course, in my head I (sort of) know the answers to these questions. Sometimes the time actually went by painfully slowly. The years passed as they were supposed to, full of books, songs, soccer games, birthday cakes, bedtimes, and friends and family. Even without Michaela around, I'm going to get up each day, be present with our other kids, do my job, and keep up with the laundry. 

LOL Just kidding about the laundry. Don't you know me? I haven't changed much in that regard, even in the span of five years. 

I have been telling her for months, "I miss you already." She graciously smiles, lets me get teary without rolling her eyes, and even tells me she loves me. Not having her around is going to be heartwrenching. 

I imagine I'll shed a lot of tears over the next 12 months, but I hope that I'll share a lot of wonderful memories and joyful moments with her too as she heads out on this exciting journey on her own. 

This is what we've been headed towards for 18 years now, walking together so that eventually she is able to walk on her own. She started walking independently when she was 8 months old... And honestly, she hasn't really looked back. I hope, though, that any time she might glance over her shoulder, it's with full confidence that while she's (almost) on her own, she's never alone.

You can imagine the chaos that might ensue, just knowing us in general, on the first day of school when not only all of the kids need to be dressed, lunches packed, bags ready, and water bottles set to go by 7:30a.m., but Mom also needs to be fully dressed, contacts in, hair brushed (and best to have teeth brushed too) for chapel, which is how the school year begins each fall. (The word "fall" is used loosely here, as it is still 105o most days.) I did not anticipate AT ALL how long it would take for all of us to get ready, to get the lunches packed, and get out the door, and we were very unfortunately late for the chapel. I have a hard time asking for help (which is stupid), so even though Mike was asking how he could help, since I had never done this before, I was struggling to let him know how he could be useful. I ended up talking to him on the phone on my way to the church because even with all my effort, I still did not get the lunches completely packed, and I realized once in the car that Christian did not have his belt on, nor did he have his bookbag. 

I called Mike again when we were leaving the church to head over to the campus (the process of which did buy me a little time, since the entire school was doing the same thing) so that he could meet us there with all the stuff that we had left behind. Once he had dropped off the kids' things, I walked them across the parking lot and to their classrooms. Christian went straight to his room, confidently and happily; for this I am grateful. Michaela and I walked Eliana to her classroom, helped her get her bag and lunch box stored, gave her a kiss goodbye, and left so that her teacher could get on with her morning. Michaela and I headed over to the part of campus where we thought she was supposed to be. Sadly, at this point we did not know where the copy of her schedule was. She thought she had given it to me the day before, when we had been on campus for an event for fifth- through eighth-graders. I couldn't find it in my purse, which was the logical place for me to have put it if I had indeed had it. I was frustrated, but trying not to freak out. 

We opened the door to a classroom which we believed might be her homeroom, but were greeted by an entire classroom of eyes staring and a teacher who stopped mid-sentence and looked at us silently. I smiled nervously (seriously, it was like I myself was in middle school again), and said,"Is she supposed to be in here?" The teacher said, not unkindly, but very matter-of-factly,"No, because she's not taking Latin." 

Alllllrighty then. I shut the door quietly, and looked at Michaela, who looked at me. I said,"Well. That was a little like the nightmare when you're giving a speech in your underwear. At least we have clothes on!" She laughed and agreed, and we left the building to find someone who might be able to help us. 

Like a beautiful beacon of light, coming toward us was the director of her school (the Logic School, or the four middle grades...the whole school is divided into three schools: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric). Clearly we were lost, and he kindly stopped to help us. We told him that we did not have Michaela's schedule (it should have stayed taped to her locker...oops), and that we had no idea where she was supposed to be. He began walking us to where he believed she ought to be, and told us he would look up her schedule and get her a new copy soon. We walked across the campus and neared the building which houses the Humanities classes and the gymnasium. A group of girls came around the corner and one of them called out,"Michaela!"

Oh! This heart of mine leaped for joy! When your 13-year-old daughter is going to not just a new school, but to school for the first time, and another young lady sees her and treats her like an old friend, like she was waiting for her to show up?! This was one of the highlights of the day for me. This girl and a couple of others took Michaela right along with them, saying,"We'll take her where she needs to go!" I looked at the director as they got a little farther away, with tears in my eyes, and expressed my relief and gratitude. I headed to the car soon after that, and once I was in there all by myself, I burst into tears.

Then I found Michaela's schedule in the front seat. She had been sitting on it. Of course. 

I got myself together and tried to trot discreetly back over to her locker area, hoping to run into her and slip her the schedule without making too much of a scene. I was successful in delivering the paper to her quickly, and then I headed to the car once more. And cried. 

Most people might think that my tears had a great deal to do with the fact that all of the kids were starting school, and of course I would be emotional. Quite honestly it had nothing to do with that. I cried because of all the things that had gone wrong. It felt like a lot. On top of all the other small things from the morning, Eliana had gone to school without her tie, which is a part of her uniform that she must wear every day. We only have one set (two ties that button under her collar on the shoulders and then cross over in the front to form a sailor sort of tie). I knew that I had washed it along with all of the other dark uniform pieces but I had no recollection of taking it out of the dryer. Everything else was hanging in the laundry room: the skirts, the sweaters, the shorts, the shirts. The tie had disappeared. I just knew the washer had eaten it.

Wednesday, when I realized the tie was missing, I asked Mike to take the machine apart to see if it had managed to slip outside of the barrel somehow, or down under the agitator. He took the front off, and he removed the agitator. No tie. I was distraught. Where was that tie?!

At any rate, now it was Thursday, the kids were all in class, and I needed to get home and look for the derelict accessory. I arrived to a quiet, empty house. Searching for the tie should have been an easy task, and one might wonder why it was giving me such trouble. Adding to our normal amount of chaos was the flooring project. Ah, yes. On top of doing all that we needed to do in order to get ready for starting at a new school, we were also dealing with the turning upside-down of our house. All the clothes and furniture that go upstairs had been moved downstairs, either into our bedroom, or all the way down into the back room. It would be an understatement to say that at that point my laundry was in an unusual state. 

Do you know me? Under normal circumstances I have problems with controlling my laundry. This flooring project has proven to offer me extra opportunities to mismanage unruly clean clothes. So it was with a sigh of reluctant determination that I began to pull articles of clothing from the top of my giant pile, fold them, and set them aside. As I took something from the center of the pile, I saw a small pile of school clothes which had been buried beneath a couple of other loads: two of Michaela's P.E. shirts, Eliana's modesty shorts, and her tie. Folded. Right there in the middle of all the clean clothes. Exactly. Where. I. Had. Put. Them.

I fell into the floor and heaved and sobbed harder than I have in a long time. 

Do you know that feeling when you have tried so hard to get it all right, when you have run all the errands, bought all the pencils and the notebooks and the binders and the socks and the shorts and the hairbows, and washed it up, or packed it up, and you still...get it...wrong? Oh, that is where I had found myself. Falling so short after trying so hard. I called myself some names (making Mike take apart the washer, for goodness' sake), bawled and squeezed my hands into fists under my shoulders as I lay curled in a ball on the floor in between my giant laundry pile and the mattress on the floor. 

I cried for all the crazy that morning, I cried for failing, and then I cried some more because I realized that Michaela didn't have her P.E. shirt (she didn't need it that day anyway, but I didn't know that), and because I hadn't even thought about Eliana's shorts (hopefully she didn't turn any cartwheels the first day of school). And then I stopped. That was that. There was nothing I could do about all of the things that had gone wrong. So I got up, and just decided to go about the rest of the day. 

And the rest of the day was just fine. 

And so we continue to adjust to the changes. We have been busy, and happy. 

Until time to do homework.

But really...mostly happy. 

I thought I would cry more, but I'm so excited about where they will be next year, and I'm so happy about so many things that are going on in the life of our church, that I don't have room for sadness right now.

As I wrote that sentence out, I was stunned. And grateful.

I hope that I am the kind of person who is able to praise God when the storm is raging, when the losses are great, during those parts of the journey when the burden is too heavy to bear. Right now I praise him because he holds us firmly in his hands, and the hope that we have in him is steadfast. It is the anchor. It is the only gain. It is shalom.

A wee bit of time has passed since I have written a blog post. After my family left, I had a hard time trying to write about their visit (Shoulda done daily posts, eh?) because there was so much I wanted to say, so I kept putting it off. However, more time passed (shocking) and then I had more to write about, and...well, you can see the predicament I landed in solidly with both of my feet.

I stuck the landing, at any rate. 

I have finally buckled down and decided to give a run-down of the last five months.

Did I just say five months? Five months is a long time, long like the amount of time Inigo Montoya waited to avenge his father's death.

Let me 'splain...No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Who can help but quote The Princess Bride at a time like this? Inconceivable. 

My parents' and brother's visit was wonderful. It was one of the best times together yet, and what made it even better is the series of comedy-of-error situations that we experienced daily. Were we living out National Lampoon's latest story? Quite possibly. From the Taco Bell tomfoolery to missing New Year's twice, it was non-stop shenanigans, with some Scrabble, a tiny lunchbox of Chex Mix, awesome quotes, the American Airlines Center (There it is!!...times six), and one exploding toilet thrown in just for good measure.

Also, this happened:

If you look at this photo for a minute and focus on Matt's face, it looks like Christian's hair is a perfectly combed, beautiful blond beard on a very merry Matthew. Mom discovered this gem of a coincidence and we couldn't stop laughing. 

We were trying to get a family picture and the camera was acting crazy. It wouldn't take the pictures while we were all waiting with smiles on our faces, but then suddenly it began taking pictures in speed-mode. 

Two words: Treasure. Trove. 

Why did I not write each day?! I was playing Scrabble. That's why. And writing down all the funny things that Matthew said. Random posts with memories and pictures coming in the future (or in other words, business as usual). 

After they left, we all tried to get back into our regular routine. About a month later, however, we were focusing on a very exciting detail in our lives: getting applications for all three kids in to a school by the deadline. We were also preparing for the entrance exam that Christian and Michaela would need to take. We did indeed get the applications in, and the kids took their test; the final thing before we would hear whether or not they were accepted was a visit from two parents whose kids were in the school, to get to know us a bit and to answer questions we might have. 

Following this visit, all we had to do was wait. I can say with great confidence and joy that all three kids were accepted (there is, of course, a story, but for now I will say that God made a way for the three of them to be able to go, and his care for our family continues to blow me away). 

Other exciting things that have happened these last few months include the following:

-I gave up soda and began exercising again.

-I went on my annual Seminary Wives' trip with some of my best friends in the world. They are awesome.

-We celebrated Easter with our wonderful church family, and had dinner with some friends that evening. 

-I started drinking soda again, and have been waffling with that and exercise for a month and a half. (This is not so much an exciting event as a confession. I'm still hoping to break this dreadful habit.) 

-Christian is finishing up his final year at HPPDS.

-Our chuch voted on a new senior pastor. 

-We got a new grill and Mike installed a new toilet upstairs. (These things are not necessarily related. The grill is outside, not upstairs, just to clarify.)

Now, just because this is a word-heavy post (Oh, you better thank me it's as short as it is. Five months? It could have been much, much longer.), here are the kids just a couple of weeks ago. Or maybe it was six weeks ago...who's counting any more? 

And that catches us up a bit. 

Now that I'm blogging again, I plan on writing more frequently. Maybe every three months rather than five...

*credit to The Afters for the phrase "my broken hallelujah."

I drove to the terminal and tried to call my mom but it went straight to voice mail, so we just drove around and around until I heard from her. When she called and told me where she was, we just happened to be outside of the building from her and we waved, but had to drive around one more time because I didn't have a place to pull in. I made one more loop and then just pulled up next to another car thinking it would be quick to load them up and then take off. 

However, I hadn't put the seats up in the back, and we needed all seven seats. So I took a few minutes to flip the seat back up and make a couple of people mad (Merry Christmas!), and then Christian, Michaela, and Matt informed me from the back that the middle seat belt wasn't functioning properly. 

I had forgotten about this problem, since we don't usually have three someones in the back seat. I quickly pulled into the parking deck of the airport and we tried to fix it. Matt tried. Christian tried. My dad tried. I tried. I called Mike and he gave us directions to try. We tried. Failed every time. That seat belt was not going to be fixed. So Matthew sacrificed himself and sat in the dangerous spot. 

It had gotten pretty late at this point, and they were hungry, but it was Christmas Eve so we weren't sure that we'd find much open. Matthew really wanted a taco, and I mean a good taco (Hello...Tex-Mex), but again...Christmas Eve. We headed in the direction of our house and hoped to pass a place that we could drive through on the way. When we got close to home I got off of the highway and we discovered, ironically, a Taco Bell with a long line around the building and a neon sign which declared "Drive-Thru Open." We were about the eighth car. We sat laughing about how Matthew was going to get his taco after all, and waited a while before the lead car moved off. We laughed about how they must have ordered one of everything on the menu. And we laughed at how quickly the line moved after that car left.

And then we laughed really hard when we got up to the speaker and waited, and called,"Hello?" and waited some more only to realize that this drive-thru was not, in fact, open. 

No taco.

I took off from there on a mission to find them some food, even though it was almost 10:30 now. Our exit was the next one, and just around the corner from my house is a Sonic, so I pulled in there since it was all lit up and two cars were in the drive-thru line there. I wheeled around to the speaker and rolled down my window, and heard a voice say,"Sorry, we're closed." It was 10:34. Matt said, laughing hysterically,"If we hadn't waited in the line at Taco Bell we wouldn't have been too late!" Not to mention the extra 30 minutes we spent at the airport fighting a losing battle with the seat belt.

I mean, I know you had to be there to get how funny it was, but we were all feeling a bit punchy. I rolled out of the Sonic parking lot and headed home, and we scrounged something up there. It was getting really late, but everyone was pretty wound up, as usually happens when we first get together with them. 

This was around 1am. 

They look like they are planning some midnight mischief. Good thing it was already past midnight. 

Eliana velcroed herself to Matt's chest for the remainder of their trip. You think I'm kidding, but I have photos to prove it. 

Since we all got to bed so late, our Christmas morning didn't get started until 12 hours later. It was fine by everyone though, and it was a very relaxed morning (folks slept in and Mom fixed a nice egg casserole for breakfast), and no one was fussing about hurrying up and opening presents at the crack of dawn. 

It was a wonderful beginning to the day.