Do not let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set the example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. I Timothy 4:12
May. 4, 2009
Emily is God; Jo is an angel... !?!?
Let’s see. We broke off reentering our “camper” dripping wet and covered with mud. As I recall, at that point we all changed into something more comfortable while Dad and Mr. Brown constructed a fire in the fireplace. By this point it was nearing lunchtime, but none of us was hungry since we’d just eaten (lots of trailmix), so the adults talked and I don’t know what everyone else did but Courtney, Emily and I retreated into my room, and there we… (drum roll, please)… PAINTED MY NAILS!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life (that I can remember… hehehe), I was wearing an unnatural color on my nails. It took me some time but I eventually chose this light pinkish-orange color that Courtney was wearing. I really like it… it’s quite pretty and sparkly but it doesn’t stand out which is what I wanted. Actually, the only reason we painted my nails is ‘cause I’d never done it before. Once they start chipping they’ll really annoy me so I’ll pick the paint off, but for now I’m enjoying colorful nails. I’ll be sure to post it here if this ever happens again.
While Courtney did Emily’s toenails – Emily says she can’t paint nails – we watched a couple videos on my computer (as always), including the one of Jenny’s wedding. It was fun – I think. The Browns girls are so longsuffering; they always watch whatever I show them without griping. After my nails dried us girls headed into the kitchen to make lunch. The parents looked pretty comfortable lounging in the living room (we wouldn’t have that nice a couch had we been really camping), and no one knew where everyone else was, so we decided we’d make lunch ourselves – grilled cheese!
It was fun. Emily buttered the bread and Courtney cut the cheese. The way her eyes lit up when she saw the cheese slicer I think perhaps she’d never used one before. She says they don’t usually buy block cheese. I told her it was cheaper that way, at Sam’s. She arched an eyebrow and told me she’d keep that in mind. I pieced together the random sandwiches and flipped. The parents and the girls got their sandwiches first because the guys and Rachel weren’t around when we were taking orders. By the time everyone sat down we had apples, six or seven different kinds of crunchies, and grilled [meat and] cheese for everyone! It was quite the delicious lunch, but Jo couldn’t eat much – I told him it was because of all that trail mix he’d devoured.
After making two meals and cleaning up one, the guys decided it was time to give the girls a break, so they cleaned up lunch and then we got to one of my favorite parts of our “camping trip” – songs!
Being inherent AIMonites – the Browns are on staff at AIM and our family has been involved for four years – we do odd things for recreation. It was with great enthusiasm that we designated parts and turned on Virtuoso at twice the normal speed. We decided that for this runthrough everyone would have parts they knew so we could do it as fast as possible. Therefore, Ryan was God; Jo was Adam; Emily was Eve; Courtney did all the background parts; and I was Satan. OK, so I didn’t really know Satan, and it’s hard to fake a part at warp speed, but who else was going to do it?
It was a lot of fun! Especially doing the dance at warp speed. I didn’t really know what I was doing so that probably slowed things down a bit but it was really fun to see Courtney be a tree and water at the same time (yes, it’s possible). Of course, one song wasn’t enough. Oh, no. And Courtney, Emily and I had our own designs on parts for the next song.
“Let’s do Gloria!” we said. “And Jo and Ryan are the dancers.”
There were exaggerated groans from the mentioned males, but they good-naturedly stepped into the parts. Of course, the “talking” part at the beginning was grossly exaggerated, and while Ryan actually tried to dance, Josiah did his best to make it look as bad as possible. Courtney made up the narrator part while she tried not to laugh. Of course, we then made the guys do the angel part too and Josiah played Mary while Ryan flapped back and told him that he was going to have a baby. Talk about awkward. And hysterical.
Emily and I doubled as all the crowd parts until the end, when I was a guard, Courtney was Pilate, and Emily played Jesus. You should have seen her when we nailed her… her “pained” expression was rather amusing. She popped up a few seconds later and stood there trying to look God-like while the guys attempted split leaps and hitch kicks across our living room. At the end we all collapsed from laughter.
But wait, there’s more! Next in line was the Faithful, in which Courtney and I took up our now-familiar and fast-becoming-favorite roles as guards. Emily snagged another deity part, playing God and looking quite regal in the cape that I still had from Thursday night’s presentation. Ryan played the first martyr, Jo was the second and the third. It was goooooooooofy but quite enjoyable to beat Jo up (I got to chop his head off) and we all laughed at each other’s mistakes.
We were on a roll and having fun, so we moved on to Champion. It was difficult to mix up the parts for everyone to do one they didn’t know, but we managed thus: Courtney played Satan; I was Jesus; Emily was God and the guys ran back and forth playing both the angels and the demons (Ryan narrated on the fly). Courtney was the most HYSTERICAL Satan! Her facial expressions were beyond description. Fortunately Ms. Sue was taking video. Her and I had a lot of fun beating up on each other even though we didn’t do anything quite as crazy as Jo and Jarek did. The guys enjoyed all the background parts but I noticed they spent a lot more time as demons than angels. Hmm… wonder if there’s a reason for that.
After four songs we decided to be done – mostly because Josiah wanted to be – and we all ran out to bounce on the trampoline. Ms. Sue followed with camera in hand. We tried the bounce-in-a-circle thing for a while but it was wearying on the legs with four teenagers, not to mention dangerous with Josiah in the circle. After a while we quit and the girls took a seat and watched Josiah and Ryan do Not 4 Sale. Don’t ask me why; I’m not sure how that got started. Jo was Satan and Ryan was the chair-and-Bible-less Christian. Mr. Dramatic (my brother) really played it up.
Once they were done Courtney suggested she and I do it, but it wasn’t nearly as funny because we did it like we were going to present it. It was funny at the end when I pushed the wall earlier than she was expecting, but that was about it. After that it was quite obvious that Jo wanted us to leave so he could hang out with Ryan – and teach Ryan a backflip – so the girls headed inside.
Inside – and what did we do inside, you ask? Practice, practice, practice! However, it wasn’t mime that we practiced, but music. Courtney, Emily and I were to “lead worship” for our “service” the next morning. Oh, perhaps I should explain the situation. Since we’d been planning to be gone on Sunday anyway we decided that everyone would sleep at our house on Saturday night – we put Mr. Dave and Ms. Sue in KT’s room – and then we’d have a service together the next morning. Since Emily plays violin, Courtney guitar and me piano, we were going to play for the worship time.
Courtney didn’t need any practice – I’m being serious – but I did, so she accompanied me while I tripped through the few worship songs I knew. The guys soon came in from the trampoline and Mr. Brown sent them back to the Brown abode to retrieve Emily’s violin (among with a few other odds and ends) so we were soon playing as a trio. Ms. Sue said we sounded really nice. I’d never played with other instruments before… it was pretty cool.
Dinner was a chili combination… we had the Browns’ chili, which had more tomatoes and corn, and our chili, which had more beans and no corn. We also had apples. We had a lot of apples – the Browns brought a TON of them. They were super good. I was impressed. So anyway, we had a lot of chili with a lot of cheese and a lot of chips. And topped it all off with…
More practicing! I had this brainy idea that we could throw together a song or two and present them at our impromptu service on Sunday. Courtney said it could be something like the “special music” or something. Jo majorly didn’t want to do it, but he eventually agreed. Dad refused to tell me what he was teaching on the next morning (he was a shoe-in for “pastor”), but he mentioned that maybe we could do The Faithful. OK, there’s one decision made. What about the other song?
There was major lack of consensus here. Some people wanted to do What Would You Do For A King (Clay Crosse), which I didn’t know but was game to learn (although of course anything that was my idea sat better with me). I wanted to do This Blood. I Surrender All was mentioned as an option as well. After we all sat around and stared at each other for five minutes, we tried discussing the pros and cons of each song and eventually decided on I Surrender All.
We crowded into the playroom at the end where there’s no pool table and put Faithful together first. Rachel agreed to present with us, thankfully, and she wanted to do the burning at the stake part. I saw no problem with giving her this part and figured it’d be good for her even though we were only presenting for five people, so she took that part. Emily was the skeptic, Courtney the first martyr, and I the third. Jo was God (no doubt to his disappointment) and Ryan did both guard parts.
I briefly ran through Rachel’s part with her and Jo told Courtney what to do, and then we just started the song. I think we started practicing around 8:15 or so. Since he was the only guard, Ryan had to spend more time beating Courtney up, so after he threw her out of the catacombs (a Branson change), he’d yank her to her feet by her hair and then punch her to the ground. Courtney really got into it. :-)
It took us quite some time to get Rachel’s part smoothed out and the specifics of having only one guard and who would do what when, but we eventually got it figured out. We probably ran the song three or four times.
I'll be remembering / The dark night; the hard fight; the long climb up a hill knowing the cost / The brave death, the last breath, the silence whispering all hope is lost / The thunder, the wonder... the power that brings the dead back to life!
May. 6, 2009 - Untitled Comment