National History Day

 We'd like to congratulate Ellis and Lillian, who got first place in the state of Maryland for Maryland History Day. They won the group documentary category for Middle School. It was a huge accomplishment, and we're so excited for them to go on to National History Day! Of course, National History Day (NHD) is typically held in exotic College Park, Maryland...a whopping 20 miles from our house. :) But it's even better this year, the entire event is virtual. So none of the excitement of travelling to a national competition. But they do win a cool t-shirt!

This project started out as an idea over the summer that Ellis and Lillian could work together on their project. They did a great job over the summer of brainstorming ideas and mediums (you can choose to make a website, display board, documentary, performance or research paper). They struggled a bit more with actually deciding and getting started on the project. So, as always happens, their plan to get a head start on the project melted away, and 2 weeks before the project was due, Mom was nagging, "don't you think you ought to get going??" It was quite the scene of drama and tears. Mom and Dad were insisting that it would take more than a day or two to make the video, and they needed to be panicking NOW! Ellis and Lillian were so mad at each other, they could hardly be in the same room with one another, and were pretty sure they didn't care if they flunked, as long as they didn't have to work on this project any more! Mom was 100% certain that she was never allowing any of her children to work together on a group project ever again. It was pretty miserable. The kids finally turned in their project, and declared that they were D.O.N.E. Even if they won and went to the county competition, they were NOT going to do ANY improvements. Final Answer. Well, Lillian wasn't quite so final, but since Ellis was, she went along.

Here's the video they submitted to the school competition:

Well, of course, they did win. Because their topic is fascinating and their video is really interesting, too. :) And they sat on that for a week. And after a bit, Ellis thought maybe they could make a few *small* edits to their movie. And, eventually, the re-wrote the whole script, re-filmed all the ASL, re-recorded the vocals, re-captioned, and uploaded. Ha!

Here's the second version of their video. In some ways, I didn't like it as much. It was more rushed. (Confession: the new video was too long, so they just bumped the speed up a little.) And they didn't look so grave about the destruction of the language - they smiled! Gasp! Ok, fine, just Lillian smiled. But they did add open captioning, which I thought was a great improvement, and some personal interviews, which were a great strength to their argument. And their finger spelling is a lot more smooth. So that's awesome. The video below is pre-open captioning, so you'll still have to turn on the CC. I couldn't get Ellis to send me the final version. She was afraid I'd post it all over the internet. What a silly thing to be afraid of.... 😆😉

By the time they'd reached the State competition, I think we all knew they'd made something special, and had a decent chance of getting some sort of award. So it was tough when they announced that the awards ceremony would be on a Sunday. We left the decision to Ellis and Lillian, and they both decided that they'd rather observe the Sabbath that participate in the MHD activities for the day. They told their teacher they wouldn't be watching, and if anything interesting happened, let them know. At 2:00, we were all very aware of what time it was. I was on the computer writing a letter to our family when a notification popped up, and my breath caught for a second. And I thought about ignoring it. But it was impossible to ignore, because the subject line was "YOU GOT FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I ran and showed it to Ellis and Lill. Ellis started jumping up and down and cheering, and Lillian just looked confused, because she thought I was showing her something in the letter that I was writing, and couldn't figure out what was so exciting in there. :) We laughed at Lillian, then showed her the email from Mr. Puracken, then we ALL jumped up and down and cheered and screamed, and made Sam run outside covering his ears. 

This time, there wasn't any discussion about if they would improve their video - they'd already thought of things they wanted to revise. So even though the judging feedback had almost nothing to suggest, they went ahead and re-wrote the script, re-recorded the ASL, re-recorded the voice-over, re-captioned, and re-compiled. Everything was beautiful, but then 3 days before the deadline, the computer ate the video and the caption file. ACK! They pulled a recent draft from YouTube and re-edited it, but they lost some of their flexibility, so for example, in some spots the captions cover up the ASL, and they can't change that. They did, however, fix the spelling error Mom caught after they'd submitted (they were allowed to re-submit.) So here's their almost-final version (except for the spelling error.) Again, some things I thought were better in the previous version, but I think this is a pretty good submission, and they can be proud of it. They did great research, and their signing is very clear. Good job, girls!! Thanks to all our friends who helped them.

Uncle Joseph arrives!

 Hello, everyone! I'm feeling much more cheerful than the last time I wrote, ha ha. We recorded "Love is Spoken Here" for stake conference. It was simple, the little kids made a musical friend that will last their whole lives, and it's a perfectly fine musical offering. Yay! Things worked out!! The only thing that makes me a little sad still is that we have this song in ASL - and all the hearing people will love it. But it's not really as great of an offering for the actual ASL users - they've already seen these kids sign this song. I wish we could have presented something new for them. But we couldn't, and the kids are worth watching again, so it's ok.

We used a video of the kids from last mother's day. I was shocked at how much the kids have changed in the last year. They're all so big and mature now! It's been wonderful seeing them again at church.

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A big and exciting thing has happened in our house - Marriner's little brother made a PROFESSIONAL ULTIMATE TEAM in DC and is living with us for the summer. Because "professional" means they pay you, not that they pay you WELL. :) So Uncle Joseph is here living the dream, and we're really enjoying getting to know a brother who is 16 years younger than us - he's closer in age to Lige than to us! He was 5 when we got married. 

Uncle Joseph does not know ASL, alas. As we've thought about how to balance the need to keep learning and practicing ASL with the need to not be rude to our guest, we've decided to go ahead and keep praying in sign language. For food prayers, we just trust he can figure out what we're saying. For family prayers, we assign one of the younger kids to interpret. The reason for this is that the little kids really know more than they'll admit, and maybe if we get them trying to say what they see out loud, they'll get better? They usually miss about half of what is in the prayer, usually because they'll just get behind. Or miss one sign, and their brain is hung-up on that word, and then miss the rest of the sentence. I sympathize, because I'm not a very good interpreter, and do the same thing. 

Joseph, alas, doesn't get to go to church with us. But we're lucky - the YSA ward shares a building with us, and meets right after us. So Joseph can ride up to church with us, wait 2 hours, to to church, and ride home with Marriner when he finishes his meetings. Yay! His bishop caught Marriner last week after church and said, "Thanks for sending us your brother for the summer! There's....quite an age difference between you...." :)

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We started in-person church last week! It was a little stressful leading up to it. But was really fun once it started. We have the kids spread out across the entire room - I feel bed for the Capitol Hill ward, it will be a long time before they will be able to fit their Primary in our little Primary room. But we could fit! For singing time, we learned a Mother's day song all in one week. (We'll Bring the World His Truth. Because it talks about moms. And we learned it last year, so it would be fast to learn. Teehee... )

On Mother's day, we got up to sing, and I realized I'd forgotten my tablet or phone to play the music on! Ack, moment of panic! Brother Wardle perceived the problem and hopped up to use his phone. Then we remembered that the cord was making loud sporadic popping noises, and it wasn't a good idea to use the phone anyway. Of course, the fact that I have several children who play the piano didn't occur to me, either. Who knows if there was a songbook anywhere nearby, anyway. So anyway, we decided to go ahead and sign a capella. In other words, just sign the song without music. It was a really interesting experience - and I'm wondering if that isn't a better way to do songs in sacrament meeting. The kids did a really great job, and all the focus was on the signs, no distractions. 

I was really focused on leading the song well and making eye contact with the Sunbeams to keep them with me. But after church, everyone came up to me and said, "Wow, Sam! He signed with so much emotion! It was so great!" I'd totally missed it. But yeah, Sam was amazing.  He's really grown up SO MUCH this last year!

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We had a fun singing time last week, but my kids came home and said they missed singing out-loud. We're not allowed to sing yet, so we played the songs on the tablet and signed along. I thought a lot about why it would be more fun for a kid to sing than sign. My teenagers love expressively signing, but the kids not so much. I thought, maybe the fun of singing is that you can hear yourself making something pretty, and so you like it. So I'm going to try using some technology to improve feedback to the kids. I tried getting the TV from the library and playing the song on the computer, to make it more visual. Alas, the remote for the TV was missing. But I found it after singing time. I'm excited to explore different ways to teach singing more visually. But it's definitely harder to coordinate with all the different tech stuff. Harder to put a lesson together. We'll see how it goes. As with everything this year - is technology the answer?