Hanging out with my sisters

Three of the four siblings in my family now live in the Metro DC area, and it's really quite fun. Because we're all very careful about minimizing our interactions with others, we feel comfortable getting together and doing fun things together. We've sorta formed an social life pod. We miss our other sister in Utah, but it's been a big blessing to have family nearby.

One of the funniest things to me about when we get together is the language connection we have. 

My sister Nicole served a mission in the Philippines, like me, and we both speak Tagalog.

My sister Ashley took ASL in HS, and has stayed involved with the language. So we both speak ASL.

So I can talk to my sisters in different languages....just not at the same time... :)

ASL usually wins. Because many of the kids know at least a little, as well as Ashley's husband. And because both Nicole and I are rusty on our Tagalog. And because Tagalog isn't super useful for talking when there's food in your mouth, which is 90% of the time I use ASL at home. Just kidding.

Look at that handsome group of multi-lingual people! We have ASL, Tagalog, Spanish and Russian. Languages that we dabble in: German, French, Russian Sign Language, Japanese, and Brittish :)

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I spoke in church on Sunday. It wasn't a particularly brilliant talk, but it was a landmark - first time in 3 years that I haven't come home feeling glum that my talks are so bad! Yeah baby! I felt like I was able to explain some thoughts and feelings with enough sophistication that they didn't sound like a Primary kid talk. My last talk was awful, my hands just did not work with me. This time I prayed pretty specifically for the gift of tongues (er, hands) to be able to express myself freely. It was way better. Definite confirmation of God's hand in my life there!

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We got a giggle out of Jane's reason she couldn't tell us what people had talked about in church today: "Everyone was just being too noisy, so I couldn't understand!" Uhhh...Jane....it was in sign language....

We have an Eagle Scout in the room.

 So...actually, we've had an Eagle Scout for years, Marriner earned his award back in...1992? But Lige earned his back in January, and never got to have his court of honor. It was scheduled for March 15th. We all know how that turned out. That was the day after the kids came home from school for a "2-week break"...

Last week, Lige's Scoutmaster, Brother Scott, texted, "Hey, I have the day off on Wednesday, what if we do a drive-by court of honor for Lige?" So we decorated the driveway, bought some donuts (cuz they sounded good) and had a little private ceremony. Grandma joined by zoom and a neighbor cheered from her car. 

Here he is!

Here's our big crowd for the ceremony...

With his Scoutmaster

Pins for his parents and mentors

This is what happens when you give your 7-yr old the camera and tell him to take pictures....

Sitting down to a birthday dinner, and realizing we'd probably better take at least one picture of him without his mask on....

Preparing for the Primary Program

This week was all about Primary Program prep.

The Primary Program is an annual event where the kids take over the worship service. Usually they work for months in Primary (Junior Sunday School) to learn songs in ASL and practice talks. The weeks before, we go to the chapel and practice using the microphone. It's sorta my main job at church.

Not to say the same thing in every. single. thing. I. write - BUT....this year has been different!

Despite not having any Primary meetings since March, we decided to go ahead with a simplified program by Zoom. We gave each kid an assignment (a song, talk or scripture, depending on age) and asked their parents to record their contributions. Then our local tech-genius will put them together into a program to be played at our worship service on October 18th.

It seemed like a great idea on paper, but getting the kids to record their parts was more than I bargained for! Sunday afternoons, my kids turn into....wiggle worms.... We got one song recorded, but hadn't been able to learn the second song well enough to record last week. I was really nervous all week about how to get my kids to show up on camera this week!

The answer came in the form of...revelation! I had a little voice whisper that my kids might do better if they had an audience to perform for. Hmmm....so one night, I got my parents (who were up really late in France) to watch my kids show-off their songs. The kids totally took the bait. Everyone was so happy. Family ties were strengthened. And I got my precious video!

The last thing I needed was a video of Sam playing the accompaniment for one of the songs. I thought that one would be easy, but it ended up being the hardest of all, as he hadn't practiced the song much lately and kept messing it up. After an agonizing hour of trying to record it and messing up, we decided to make it into a duet - he played the top hand, Lillian played the left. And that worked out. We got the video. They got cake in a mug (b-r-i-b-e....) 

I can't wait to see the Primary program in its fullness in a few weeks! I know some of the other parents were resorting to b-r-i-b-e's too, but the idea of having a normal, cute, perhaps hilarious Primary program just makes my heart happy, and I think the difficulty of extracting normalcy-on-camera from a kid are all worth it!

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In another observation, Martha has been praying for her extended family lately. Some aunts, uncles and cousins who live close together all got coronavirus from one of the high school students, so they were in our prayers. Only I didn't realize Martha was praying for them. She's always prayed for her family, but she's started doing family REALLY big. 

Family in ASL, from www.lifeprint.com

 

Martha will do it so big, she'll almost fall off her knees reaching in front of her. Sometimes she bonks her mom or dad kneeling across from her. I sorta laughed at her gigantic family sign, and noted to myself that we need to hang out with more Deaf people, so she can stop doing weird things. Then the other day, she bonked me, and I mentioned that she didn't have to do it so big. "Oh, no, mom, this is how I sign my big family - all my aunts and uncles and cousins. The little one just means the family that lives here with us." First off, I love the way kids use lots of descriptive language to express things they don't have the vocabulary for. Second, I love the way she gets ASL - that's exactly the way it works. You draw it with your hands. I don't know if an adult deaf signer would ever do that exact thing, but the principle was sound.

Back to School!

 It's late summer!! I know some of my readers call this "fall", but not around here. We're enduring our last heat wave of the year (knock on wood...pretty please!!_) and then hopefully we can have just normal late-summer days....but for right now, I'm hiding in my house. Except, of course, for when I go out to pick stuff like this:

But the big event of the week is school starting! Here's what everyone looks like so far this year:

Most of the kids have been using two computers - one from the school, and one of ours as a back-up, because the internet is struggling with all the stuff they have going on. One of Lige's teachers wanted them to run Zoom and 3 different Chemistry apps at the same time on their little Chromebooks. That didn't work... But things are starting to calm down as teachers, students and parents get a feel for what works.

We have the Junior/Senior High School downstairs in the family room, and the Elementary School on the main floor, in the dining room. We found that 5 people on Zoom in the same room, trying to interact with their teachers, was too chaotic. So we spread out a bit. Marriner is upstairs in his room, where is office is. Jane gets the living room to play (quietly!) That leaves the kitchen and the kids' bedrooms for me :) 

Being quiet isn't as hard as I thought it would be - if Jane doesn't have anyone to play with, she doesn't feel a need to scream. Hmmm.... :) But we do use a lot more sign language than we used to, just so we don't disturb people. Today I realized that this is actually really good for Jane! So I've been taking the opportunity to coach her on how to respond in sign language, and we've sorta go our secret code going on. That's the best part of ASL - it feels so secret-code-y!!

Of course, our attempts to be quiet don't always work. Today, I realized I needed to grind wheat to make sandwich bread (and no, don't give me any of that "why don't you just make white bread" stuff. Only wheat bread will do for me today. Jane even suggested we make cinnamon raisin wheat bread. Yum!) So, I waited until 2 kids were on break (that's the maximum number at any time. Have you guys seen my schedule yet? I must show it to you, it's exciting) and told everyone else they couldn't make any comments for a few minutes. It worked out.

(Here's the schedule. It's great. I love how nobody has a break at the same time. I also love how the middle school kids have way more breaks than the middle schoolers. *sarcasm)

I've got one more good ASL-related story from the start of school. Martha had a one-on-one meeting with her teacher yesterday. Mrs. Elumba was quizzing Martha on her letters and numbers, to see what she knows. I guess the teacher said to hold up the number of fingers of the number she saw on the screen. I saw Martha say, "two" and hold up two fingers. "Five, " and 5 fingers. "Six," and hold up her three middle fingers...a pause..."Well, Mrs. E, that's the SIGN for six!" Fortunately, her teacher had already heard that she knows sign language, so she got what she meant. Made me chuckle, though. And Martha was pretty funny trying to figure out how to put up 8 fingers, instead of signing 8. Turns out, she doesn't actually do that much. But my mom-self was laughing that it would have been just as hilarious if she'd tried to sign 8, because she can never remember the difference between 7 and 8, anyway :)