I've written many times about the Root Cellar missions in both Portland and Lewiston Maine.  It is always a fun time when I am there, and it is always especially fun when I get to bring my neverthriving of teenaged jugglers.  Last week I brought my team, along with chaperone and friend Dave Earle, and, as always, it was a sweet time.

LOL did an hour long show highlighted by Clare's ax juggling, a very successful all team partner routine, and Lana juggling color changing rings.  It was also the first time Clare did her sponge ball sleight, and Brenna used an antique production box for the first time as well.  These props came to me for free from a retiring magician in New Hampshire, and it's nice to get them first few of MANY new props into the show.

The audience of mainly children and a handful of teens was appreciative and exhuberant.  When Toby mimed being crucified in the skit "Me", one little guy yelled out, "He's Jesus."  There was also a lot of laughter, especially for Alex's mouth coil, and Eamon's vanishing liquid.

This show was also the first of several that featured an eighth grade solo.  This is a time in a show when an eighth grader, soon to be aging out of LOL as they head to high school in the fall, performs a routine all of their own that they themselves have created.  It was Elsa's turn, as she did a routine of juggling many different types of objects while circling the audience nonstop on a ripstick.  She had practiced it to perfection, but she had not counted on lights hanging down overhead, or that her accompaniment song would be slow to load , creating times of dead air.  She did her best, but she is not one to want things sugar coated.  It was a rough routine, and she is considering redoing it at a high school chapel or at awards night at the end of the school year.  I hope she does.