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.

--------------

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...." :)

-------------

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!

------------

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?