A Show to Remember

   Our homeschool group's variety show was on Friday. We had a rehearsal on Thursday, which was less than fabulous, compared to other rehearsals we've had. I mean we practiced, but one of the main characters in the play couldn't be there until 2:30 and I had to leave at 3:00 for my drivers test. I don't feel like we practiced as much as we could've, but with the time constraints and people leaving, we did the best we could.
   On Friday, we got there early at 2:15 so I could do Sunshine's makeup. Practice started at 2:30, and we're never really prompt, so I had plenty of time to do her makeup and fix someone else's hair. It was a decently productive start to the day of practicing, rehearsing and getting our act together. We had a long day ahead of ourselves.
   We started practice and it went pretty well. Typically, we have a very solid practice were we run through the program a few times. This time, we had a what I could only call a very loose practice. I've never seen anything so informal at our homeschool group when it comes to a last minute practice. It felt rushed and unprepared, as if we were all running around tying up loose end that should've been covered months ago.
   Even without all the practice we usually have, it still went really well. The first part of the program was our variety show, where a collection of students who are inclined to perform sing, dance, and even do stand-up comedy. We can be an eclectic bunch at times, but it's a show that's worth attending.
   I sang Mary, Did You Know?. I've definitely enjoyed other performances more, but I don't feel it went as bad as it could've. I messed up the lyrics and I didn't strum the right chords at times. I was really nervous about it, and that probably contributed.
   What I really feel pushed me out of my comfort zone was the stand-up comedy act that was right before mine. One of the other students bet the comedian (if you could even call him that) a dollar that he wouldn't do a special, never-before-heard piece about my song. Something about Mary having 'annual amnesia' or something. Well, just let me say that he walked out of there with an additional dollar in his pocket.
   I was really nervous walking into my song to begin with, and that was enough to totally throw me off any sort of confidence I had. I felt like dying would be a better option that going up on stage, but due to a lack of suicide weapons, a shortage of time and my friends sitting all around me, I went up anyway.
   Aside from that event, the rest of the show went pretty well. Several of my friends and I had a kazoo choir. We performed Carol of the Bells. I'm sure it was the best rendition anyone has ever done on kazoo. That's mostly because I don't believe many people have actually performed Carol of the Bells on kazoo before.
   Two of my best friends sang It Is Well With My Soul together and it was utterly stunning. My best friend does not like to be on stage, and so for her to be singing on stage is a very brave thing for her to do, and a rare treat for the audience. Her younger sister is another great friend of mine, and her singing is fabulous as well. I have such talented friends. :) 
   The little kids sang a cute little song about patience. Some of the younger girls did an amazing dance directed by one of my friends. It was great. I kind of hate to say it, but I really think their dance topped every one we ever did when I was a kid. It was part dance, part gymnastics and part art. It was great.
   There were some other great acts, but for now I'm going to write about our drama. It went pretty well. Part of it, we had to improvise because we skipped a page. But what we lack in line memorization, we make up for in improv.
   I felt like our projection was good and it went really well. After the drama, we all went on stage and sang We Wish You a Merry Christmas. I was supposed to help start it off, but the other girl who was supposed to be helping started to early and too high. No one could really tell though.
   Afterwards we had snacks. They were pretty good, though I only ate brownies. After that, some of my friends had an arm wrestling (cough cough...competitive handholding...cough cough) competition. The real rankings were established. I don't arm wrestle. It's just stupid to me, but my brother and some of my friends do it like every other week. It can get pretty intense at times, believe it or not.
   After all that was over, I found a broken rubber band and one of my friends and I managed to slingshot a pencil almost the entire way across the sanctuary. After we had done that a few times, we turned it into a game were we'd race to see who would get it to whatever we shot, first. It was a very fun game.
   We eventually lost the pencil somehow. You would think you could find a pencil on the floor, but we could not. Then we found a dime. As you could probably guess, we lost that too. Then we managed to break the rubber band to top it all off.
   Fortunately, we were in luck, cause one of the younger girls had a animal balloon kit. (You just can't make some of these things up.) We took one of the balloons and used that as the slingshot. It was harder to shoot things with a balloon than a rubber band, but we made it work.
   I found another pencil and my dad gave us another dime. We played until we had pretty much lost everything and we had to leave. I totally would've won if we hadn't lost the pencil and thirty cents. It was still enjoyable though.
   Coming into the performance, I was ready for the semester to be over. Now that it's over, I really wish we were going back next week. It went surprisingly fast. At the time, it didn't seem like it was slipping by so quickly, but now it hardly feels like we ever went for more than a day or two. I'm already excited for next year. :)