March 2015

As usual, the Remmers family were busy bees in March.  This may turn out to be the longest newsletter yet!

The month started off on an unfortunate note.  On Sunday, March 1, John performed in a Pre-Festival recital.  At this event, all the students of our piano teacher have an opportunity to play their pieces in front of a group, before they have to play in front of the judges at Festival the following weekend.

John was second, and though he knew his pieces well and was prepared, he got to the piano and completely blanked out.  He could hardly remember a note!  He was devastated.  Even though it has happened to all of us at some point in our lives, it is simply excruciating to watch it happen your son.  Argh!  We worked with him throughout the following week to help encourage him to press on and to develop better memory techniques.

Thankfully, his hard work paid off when he played flawlessly at the actual performance and got a SUPERIOR (the highest mark) from the judges.  Some of the comments from the judges were, "You have a nice touch, which made the piece sing out beautifully" and "You are a very careful player--that makes it nice to hear you play."  Woo hoo!  Go John!

This year for the first time, John also served as a page at the Festival.  That meant that he sat outside the door of one of the performance rooms directing parents and making sure no one entered while someone was playing.  He was also responsible for delivering the judging sheets to the calculation room at the end of the session.  It was a great experience for him, and next year, when he is in 8th grade, he will be able to get school credit for volunteering.

It was a big month for John, as the following weekend he and his team competed in Odyssey of the Mind.  Unfortunately, one of John's teammates, who was planning on playing the part of the narrator for the performance, had to leave town unexpectedly for his grandparent's funeral.  John stepped up at the last minute to fill in and did an amazing job.  In further bad news, however, another teammate was unable to get her device to work and spent a very uncomfortable FOUR MINUTES (out of the allotted 8 they had for their skit) trying to get it going.  John did some great improv to fill the time, which the judges complimented him on, but it meant that they were unable to complete the skit and demonstrate the devices they had worked so hard to build.

They were crushed.

Margie suggested that they get together another time to perform the skit for the parents, with the missing team member this time, since none of us got to see it from start to finish nor saw any of the devices except the ones our own children had made.  Everyone thought that was a great idea, but the coach wanted to do it after Spring Break.  Hopefully it will still happen.  We would love to see it!

John and his Odyssey of the Mind team.

John also attended a sound meeting for his upcoming production, Alice in Wonderland, and began track season.  As I said, it was a busy month for him!

Lyn was busy this month, too, but not quite as much.  She was also supposed to play for judges with the band in the percussion ensemble, but it got snowed out.  She did, however, finish up her swing dancing lessons (though we have already signed up for the next round) and continued to rehearse for Annie Get Your Gun.

Both kids attended a day of workshops and a concert with Fading Point, the a cappella vocal ensemble from Southern Virginia University.  Lyn got to stay for the dance afterwards, but John is not yet old enough, so he came home.

Another thing the kids did together was build storage boxes for Margie's closet.  At her sister-in-law's suggestion, Margie had looked into getting her closet professionally organized, but in the end she decided she didn't want to spend the money ("I would rather have a pool," is now her mantra every time she considers buying something!).  But when she was cleared to put everything back in her closet, it just looked so ugly compared to the beautiful new bathroom!  So Margie had an idea--she went to Target and bought all the supplies to build storage boxes.  She had the kids help her assemble the first one, then Margie had to leave the room, and when she came back, the kids were doing the second one all by themselves!  Wow.  What amazing children we have.

John and Lyn assembling the storage unit.

The finished product!

Speaking of the house, I know you're on the edge of your seat, so here's the scoop:

The master bathroom is still not completely done.  There are some finishing touches that they won't do until they are doing the finishing touches everywhere--such as retouching the paint that got scratched when the new windows were installed, or fixing small dents in the wall.  For some reason, which is unclear to the contractor, the sub-contractor doing the heating and ventilation never finished in there either, but since they have to come back to work on venting the hall bath, they will do all of it at once.

Speaking of the hall bath, it has now been completely demolished, and it is about ready for rough-in inspection, I think, before they start rebuilding it.  Dan is in charge of the design, and he seems to really be enjoying the process.

We can see the kitchen from the bathroom!

We now have the beginnings of a portico, which is really nice when it rains, and all new windows throughout the house, which Margie can't wait to clean when the renovation is complete!

The beginning of the portico.

The kitchen has also been completely demolished, as well as the living room with the sliding glass door.  Everything is down to the studs, and we are living in the front living room and dining room, along with all our stuff piled around us.  It's pretty squished and uncomfortable, but we'll survive.  We are making good use of our microwave, electric skillet, and rice cooker!

Bye bye kitchen!

They have completed the bump out into the back yard, and during this process, we had a bit of excitement as one of the construction workers fell through the floor, bursting through the ceiling of the basement and landing in the living space downstairs (Margie was not down there in her office at the time, thank heavens!).  Luckily, he only broke his finger.  This means, however, that the crew will have to fix and clean up downstairs at their expense.  And we thought we weren't getting any work done in the basement!  It's now official--every single room in our house will be touched by this remodel.

For awhile we could see the family room from our backyard!

The worker (not the one in the picture) fell through a hole similar to this one.

Anyway, after the inspection, they'll put up the drywall, and it will start looking like a house again.  The kitchen cabinets are in our garage, and we are excited to see them installed!

In addition to all the house stuff, Margie also had a big month.  She finished up the last part of her couponing class, continued to do "homework coaching" for a neighbor's 8th grader, made breakfast for Lyn's Seminary class, learned how to do online family history research (those of you who are family members may receive a call about this!), attended two different funerals for women who died way too young, attended a baptism, attended a legacy planning seminar, worked three days at Finance Park (her favorite place in all the world), and taught a time management class to the recovering warriors at Ft. Belvoir.  Whew!

Dan's big night was early in the month, on Sunday, March 8.  He had been nominated for two WATCH (Washington Area Theater Community Honors) awards for his set design and construction of the HOUSE that he built for LTA's Proof last year.  Sadly, he did not win either of them, but it was truly an honor to be nominated, especially considering he had been completely snubbed by the LTA awards for the same work.

In addition to the awards ceremony, Dan and Margie got to spend some time together, at the high school "touching bases" day, where we had a chance to meet briefly with each of Lyn's teachers.  It was great to hear that they all love her and love her enthusiasm for learning.  We also attended God of Carnage at LTA--a play about two couples who begin by meeting to civilly discuss a playground fight that their sons had gotten into and end up showing their true colors.  It featured some really strong acting.

As a family, we attended Twain Community Night at John's middle school.  John and Margie had attended this last year and had a BLAST, so we were really looking forward to it.  We were especially looking forward to the International Room, where we would get to sample yummy food from around the world provided by the families of the ESL (english as a second language) students.  We were especially looking forward to this since we are without a kitchen at home!  Unfortunately the evening wasn't quite as fun as last year.

By far the biggest, most exciting, and most fun event of the month, however, was EPIC PI DAY.

As some of you may know, on March 14 (3.14) each year, we host a "Pi Party".  It's very simple--people bring pie, and we all eat pie!  THIS year, however, was an "epic year"--that is, a day that will only happen once in our lifetimes.  Pi is 3.141592653..., which means that March 14, 2015 at 9:26:53, we got to celebrate PI MOMENT.

Of course, our house was completely under construction, so several months ago, Margie arranged to host the party at a friend's house.  It's a good thing we had it there, because their house is much bigger than ours, and we had a HUGE turn out.  Not only did we have all the pie (with numbers counting out the digits), but we set up a countdown clock on a computer in the kitchen, and we got to countdown to Pi Moment just like it was New Year's.  Margie provided noisemakers (which the kids loved a little more than the adults), and Margie's friend turned on their mirror ball.  What great fun!

Margie cleverly spelled out Pi across the desserts, but many people thought she was rating them!

John enjoyed Pi Moment!

The month finished out on a bit of a spiritual note as Margie and Lyn attended the bi-annual Women's Conference--a worldwide broadcast event hosted by the leaders of our church.  It included a lovely sit down dinner beforehand and inspiring messages from women around the world.

After that, spring break began.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to go anywhere or do anything fun due to the construction and the consequent money crunch, but the kids are enjoying sleeping in, watching TV, and since it is so noisy due to all the construction around here, I think they are secretly looking forward to going back to school.  Ha ha ha!

We hope you are doing well and enjoying the spring.  We'd love to hear from you!