ladies and gentlemen, elvis has left the building

it's been weeks of listening to the bean pluck out "love me tender" on her ukulele in the back seat, in the living room, in the bathroom, in the - well, you get it.  all that plucking earned her a spot in this year's school talent show, and she was equal parts stoked and terrified despite having already performed some sort of act the last two years.

we'd originally planned to have her in one of her hula skirts and a flower in her hair, but as i was driving home after dropping her off at school one morning i had the best idea ever:  find her an elvis costume to wear instead.  come on, that's genius, right?  and so when she got home i asked her if she would be game for it and sure enough, she said yes.  a couple of clicks on amazon and we were set, and you saw the sneak preview in a post last week.

she had a full dress rehearsal the day before the show, and because she had cheer right afterwards i had her just wear her practice gear under the costume.  but still...this is awesome, is it not?

her confidence faltered a little as we got to school and a few kids came up to her to comment on her costume - nothing bad, and they all knew exactly who she was dressed up as.  i think she was just feeling a little self-conscious, but i just kept encouraging her and we made our way into the gym for the rehearsal.

i sat off to one side when her turn came up and figured i might as well take some pictures and video.

if you want to hear (almost) the whole song, it's here.  and as it turns out, this was a much better view than what we ended up with for the actual show.  it's just over a minute long, which was just the right amount of time.

as expected, the gym was pretty full when showtime came around.  there were tons of friends and family present for all of the performers, and my mom came out to watch with us.  i took this before the hub arrived:

we didn't know at which point in the show she was scheduled to perform, and then about halfway through we finally saw her take the stage.  "she likes to draw, and she's been a cheerleader for five years.  here she is with an homage to elvis!"

the music stand almost completely covered her up, so i was extra grateful that i'd captured it on video during the dress rehearsal.  but you still should watch this (much shorter) video clip and be sure to pay attention at the end, because her exit stage left is - well, it's epic.  and it was her own idea, which made it even better:

the video cuts off just before the emcee hops back onstage and announces "ladies and gentlemen, elvis has left the building."  that was FIL's idea, as he lamented the fact that they'd miss being at the talent show to see it live.  i was glad that the drama director was totally on board with it and added it to the script without hesitation when i emailed her with the idea.

i think this might be my most favorite of her three talent show performances thus far - even more than last year's puppet show or when she did the hula.  and although it hasn't even been a day since this one ended, we're already thinking ahead to what might come next year.

never too soon to start planning, amirite??

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getting ready for coming attractions

now that all of the birthdays in the house of wan are over for the year, it's been pretty quiet around here.  the ILs went back home on tuesday, and we've just been in the usual routine of cheer practices, math tutoring and prepping for our girl scout meeting tonight.  with the girls in the junior level now, we've given them a lot more responsibility for running the meetings and planning out what we're going to be doing for the year.  it's been a lot of fun watching them work together so far, and each girl is expected to volunteer to run at least one meeting.  they're to plan the activities, and whatever we do needs to either be geared towards earning a badge or doing some sort of community service.

the bean has been doing a great job with her new cheer team, learning new stunts and dances and while she wasn't too sure if she liked it in the beginning, it's definitely grown on her.  i got to watch them perform their routine for competition the other day, and it's pretty awesome.  the coach has jammed as many high-point stunts as she possibly can in there, and along with the professional choreographer they hired, that routine is impressive as hell.  not everyone has tumbling skills on the team, but they really take advantage of the ones who do.  they've done a lot of team bonding activities and are a pretty tight-knit group of girls.  watching them practice, the confidence that the bean has gained is visible.  i'm going to need tissue when i watch them perform at competition.

speaking of tearing up, we got the bean's costume for her performance at next week's school talent show.  and these are tears of a different kind, because - well, look:

oh yes.  that is a full-on elvis costume, and she's got the gold glasses and that elvis snarl all ready to go.  she's been practicing that ukulele nonstop, and i cannot wait for the show.

less than a week to go!  oh boy.

puppet show, puppet show, puppet show

remember last year, when the bean performed a hula solo at the school talent show?  well, this time around, she and a handful of friends got together at school and decided that they wanted to do an act as a group.  of course, this was all decided at the very last minute - i'm talking like the day before permission forms were all due in to the drama teacher.  sounds like she inherited the procrastination gene from...well, let's not get into that.

they had a little less than a week from that day till auditions.  last year, they went through the motions of an audition mostly to see what the acts were going to look like and figure out timing.  this year, with 40 acts comprised of somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 kids, we were told that they wouldn't be able to keep all of the acts.  makes sense - they'd be there all freaking night if we had to sit through that many performances.

so with that in mind, i and the parents of the other girls in their group tried our best to prep them for possible rejection.  they wanted to do a puppet show, and by monday, i told the bean that if they didn't get it together by the end of that day with a solid plot and script in mind, they probably needed to pull out and plan better for next year.

and what do you know - that apparently lit a fire under their little asses, because when she got in the car that afternoon after school, she told me that they were going to do their own version of "goldilocks and the three bears."  YARG.

the very next day, she came home with a script and a mission - to practice her role as "goldilocks" and to start creating puppets.  WUT.  one of the moms came up with a pretty brilliant idea though - to use stuffed animals to tell the story.  and with about half a dozen bags of stuffies that the bean had just set aside to donate to a local shelter, we invited that mom and her daughter to come over and go through the script and pick out some potential characters for the performance.

one mom was tasked with putting together the stage, and the other with creating something to represent the three bowls of spaghetti - these bears didn't want to eat porridge - and the beds for goldilocks to test out.  we got together at our house again the next day, this time with all four girls, and got started on practicing their lines.  we needed to get the entire performance down to two minutes, and we knew that the closer we got to that time the better their chances would be of making the cut.

the stage was pretty ingenious - it was a baby gate bent into a rectangular shape with PVC pipe to hold up a black backdrop.

after a bunch of revisions to the script, slashing entire scenes and combining a couple to cut down the time, the girls had it down to a science.  when we finally got them down to right around 2:08, we called it a wrap and shut it down for the night.

the audition was short and sweet.  since the girls are older now, they had to go through their entire audition without any parents present - just them and the panel of judges.  they had a little time to practice beforehand, and then they went in.  the judges were suitably impressed with our little stage, and seemed excited to see what the girls had in store for them.

now, i'm not gonna lie - i was half hoping they wouldn't make it.  that's terrible, i know.  but man...it's freaking stressful!  prepping, auditioning, practicing, performing.  too much for my lyfe.  we were told at the audition that the lineup of acts would be posted online later that evening, and we pep-talked the girls, congratulating them on pulling it together in such a short amount of time, telling them they'd done a great job, but also to remember that they were going to cut down to probably half of the auditioning acts to keep the running showtime down to a minimum.  they all seemed ready for whatever decision they got, and expressed how much fun they'd had with the process.  such great attitudes from all of them, which made us all proud.

i'm sure you know what came next...they made it.  actually, from the looks of it, they didn't cut a single act.  i kind of wondered if that was because all of the acts were really that good, or if they just couldn't bear to shatter anyone's dreams of being onstage.  either way...we were going to the talent show!

we didn't have a long time to wait.  the final dress rehearsal was the following wednesday, and with a call time of 6:15 we all met up at 5:30 to get in a little more practice.  they did just fine, with a few tweaks here and there, and then they were up:

the next evening, it was showtime.

they started almost exactly at 6:30, with a full house and all 40 acts participating.  there were dancers, singers, piano pieces, even a kid who could solve not just one, but two rubik's cubes in just one minute.  i'm not gonna lie, that kid was freaking amazing.  and then it was the girls' turn:

they got through their entire routine with a couple of hiccups that were hilarious - it was the kind of act that was made even better with little mistakes.  they got a nice round of applause and then returned to their reserved spots at the front of the audience.  i think everyone was relieved when they were done, and then the rest of the show went on pretty quickly.  the drama teacher really knows her shit, though - even with that many kids and that many different acts to manage, the entire show was done in an hour and a half.  we were outta there by 8:00.

i wonder what next year's show is going to look like.  i can't wait.

super fun randomness

so first, do you know what a fluffernutter is?  it involves these three things (and a knife):

and then if so, did you have any idea that last week was national fluffernutter day?

the teen was introduced to fluffernutters during a trip to disney world back when she was about 8.  it was fantastic.  we stayed at the pop century hotel on property, which is adorned with all sorts of great pop culture icons through the decades.  they had a food court where you could pick up all sorts of great grub, and one day she discovered a sandwich made with rainbow tie-dye bread, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff.  she was hooked from the first bite.

so of course, we had to celebrate the holiday.

you know what's funny?  watching the bean get really excited when she gets a text message.  i wiped my old phone and put some of her favorite games and apps on it, and then i set her up with her own apple ID so that she could use it for texting.  there are only a handful of numbers on it - grandma, grandpa, mommy, daddy, her sister and her uncle. and she loves that damn emoji keyboard. 

have i mentioned that the bean is in show choir this year?  they've had about 4 or 5 practices so far, and they had their first official performance during the first-ever elementary talent show at school.

yes, i totally had a snack.  after all, it was a fundraiser.  i had to, right?  and the show choir was the final act of the evening, so i needed a little something to take me through the 10+ performances that preceded them.  the bean had come straight from gymnastics class, and struck a pose for me after i was done helping her get cleaned up and ready for the stage.

on a completely different topic, the bean's sassypants poses kill me.

anyway, the talent show was fun to watch.  kids from kindergarten through the 5th grade got up on that stage and did all sorts of things from singing to baton twirling to a comedy act with some tap dancing and even a fitness demonstration.  i had to give them lots of credit - i'm not brave enough to do that kind of stuff.  and then finally, the show choir took the stage.

the junior high kids showed off some moves first, and then the elementary choir scampered up onstage and joined in.  they'd only had two weeks of rehearsals for this particular song, but they killed it.  we'd been lucky enough to snag seats on the side that the bean was positioned on, and since she's one of the youngest kids in the group she was in the front row.  i was too excited and mesmerized to take any video, but remembered to hand my phone to the teen for some pictures.  she was sitting right next to me but had a better view, and got this great shot of her sister's triumphant finale pose.

and i swear, someone must've been chopping onions in there because my vision got all blurry and my eyes started leaking.  huh.

they'll have another performance at the school's annual fund dinner next month.  i cannot wait.  hopefully i'll remember to get some video footage this time around.