Every year the graduating 6th grade class performs a play for the students on the last day of school. They also do an evening performance for the parents/families the night before. It meant A LOT to Nick to be a part of this thing. So it was a big disappointment when we told him that since we were flying out the morning of the last day of school, he might not be able to be in it. We would have to talk to the teacher and work something out. The principal and his teacher discussed it and graciously agreed to change the long-held tradition, and have the play be the first thing the kids did on the final day of school, rather than the last. Hooray, Nick could still be in the play!
Thursday night we all went over to the school to watch him perform. 
The play was suggested by one of the girls in his class, and was called “Tequila Sunrise”. Yeah, I was a little put off by the title, and asked lots of questions to make sure it wasn’t also turned into a movie by the same name. That would have been highly inappropriate for 6th graders! But no, it actually had nothing to do with tequila and was a funny little play.
The premise is that a small village in Spain is being terrorized/controlled by the one rich guy who owns everything in town. The final straw is when a poor peasant falls in love with the same girl that the rich guy fancies. The girl chooses the peasant, so the rich guy orchestrates a trap for the peasant and gets him thrown in jail. The villagers have had enough and band together to form a plan to get him to change his wicked ways.
Nick was the jailer, and he got to lock up his best friend, Till, who played the peasant.
The audience was pretty cute, and very interested in the story. 🙂 Chris and I were in the back and these two were way up in the front by themselves. They sat perfectly still the entire time, so it must have been a pretty good play.
The plan the villagers came up with was to trick Don Carlo into thinking he was sick, and then had died. They even put him in a grave and had a funeral for him.
Everyone took turns throwing a flower on him, while uttering how glad they were that he was dead. It kind of got out of hand, however, when someone threw a flower too hard, hitting Pascal in the face. He retaliated by throwing it back out of the grave at them, and then there was a brief flower fight, which was completely not scripted and everyone got out of character. But they finally got it under control again, and back on track.
Nicholas did a good job, as did most of the kids, but the ones who were troublemakers in class, were definitely still punks during the play. Too bad for all the others who worked so hard to make it awesome. And of course, the kids got into bed very late, so I couldn’t finish packing for the trip until very late, either. But since only Nick was going to school in the morning, we weren’t too worried. 🙂
The next morning, he went to school as usual, to perform for the students. I had arranged with his teacher that I would pick Nick up at 9:30, so he would be able to finish his part in the play, but still have time to come home, change and get on the bus to the airport by 10:20. Then Chris informed me that actually, the bus we needed to take left at 10:12. And when you’re busy baking breakfast treats for the entire staff at school, and still trying to clean at the same time, a lost 8 minutes is a BIG deal!
Of course, the muffins took longer to bake than anticipated, so I got up to the school later than originally planned. Like, it was quarter til, I think? And his teacher didn’t want to let Nick leave, since he had forgotten what we had agreed on, and thought Nick was staying until 10:30. Completely forgetting that technically we had used a Joker day for Nick, and he didn’t need to be at school at all! I was so panicked about the time constraints that I didn’t have time to argue with the teacher. I didn’t want to argue, either. He is Sarah’s teacher for the next three years, and then Noah will have him after that. I can’t make an enemy out of him. But I NEEDED to leave right then, or we were going to miss the bus and that was not the way I wanted to start off our vacation. So I just kind of reached out and grabbed Nick’s hand to pull him towards the door! At that same moment, the principal saw me in the foyer, and came over to shake my hand, and thank me for bringing breakfast for the teachers. The teacher started to complain to him that I was taking Nick out of school too early, but he just patted him on the shoulder, said it was fine and waved us on our way. If the only benefit I ever get from serving a year on the Parent Council Board was that, it was worth it!
So we raced home, and Nick ran to change out of his costume and into travel clothes. I meanwhile, was still throwing things in bags, and trying to finish cleaning the kitchen after my baking bash that morning. And with 12 minutes to go until the bus left, our neighbor came over to get the key so she could feed our fish while we were gone. She got more than she bargained for, when she ended up helping the kids get their shoes on, and carried some of our luggage down to the bus stop at the end of the driveway. We brought her back 12 bottles of vitamins, though, so it’s all good. 🙂 Without her, I don’t think we would have made it, seriously. But we did, and the American adventure began….