Sound of Music Fatigue

Oh the fatigue is great.  Since starting rehearsals for The Sound of Music early in June, most nights I haven't left the theater until sometime after 10:30.  Now, anyone who knows me personally knows I rarely make it to bed before 11:00 anyways (usually more like midnight), but when you get home at 11:00 and you still have stuff to do to get ready for daycare the next day it takes its toll on you!  Why not get those things done before you leave for rehearsal you ask?  My cast-mate Sandi and I were put in charge of managing the set painting, which meant as soon as my daycare kids were gone I was flying down to the high school to contribute as much as I could.  Get stuff done during daycare??  There's only so much you can do with 6 young children in the house. 

The housework has suffered, dinners have suffered, I've eaten cookies for breakfast, lunch, and snack a few days now, and eaten more fast food than I have in the last year, and my goal every night is to make the kitchen not stink before I get to bed so I can run another load of dishes in the morning, but the play is going great!  So I thought I'd show you a little of what I've been working on!

This is the main set for the Von Trapp living room, I took it from the wings so you can't see the other furniture which is placed downstage from here.

This is the outside of the Von Trapp home.  What you can't see downstage from this is a "marble" bench, and a patio table and chairs.

And here are all of the nuns in the play, I'm the third nun in the back row :o)

I've been craving the opportunity to learn music and script, choreography, rehearse, perform, and party with people who enjoy those same things as well.  I've been craving it for almost 10 years, and it is feeling so good to do this for myself! 

Spencer has been wonderful and making sure to be home at 5 every night so I can fly out the door and come home 6 hours later, taking care of the kids, doing all the bedtimes and a lot of the dinner times, and forgoing his own evenings out so that I can work on this play.  Thank you honey!

We have 4 performances left, then set strike, and then I'm done.  I'm looking forward to sleeping again some day soon, but I'll be sad when it's all over.  We have performances tonight through sunday night.  info at erct.org !

enjoy this local newspaper article about the play, photos were taken a few days before we opened.

http://erstarnews.com/content/view/13268/247/

and some photos taken for the paper, some are very silly.

http://hometownsource.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=1049396&CategoryID=44504&view=1

Wishful Wednesday

Wishful Wednesday!

I wish my little Babydoll would feel better, she has a nasty cough.

I wish exercising was more fun,

and didn't take so much work

and could be done while I sleep.

I wish I had a housekeeper.

I am hoping for an amazing, energy-packed, successfull, and perfect last 4 performances for The Sound of Music!!

This shameless plug was brought to you by Elk River Community Theater, info at erct.org :o)

Spider Web

We woke up this morning to fog, and dew-covered grass... and this.

Little Man Plays Dress-Up

The other day Little Man decided to play dress up... or something like that.  He found my headband, and the frame for one of the nets for the EleFun game, and he did this. :o)

My favorite evening with Babydoll!

Two weekends ago my cousin Liz got married.  Her wedding fell on a friday evening that Spence was away at Rockfest, but I was planning to take all three kids to the wedding.  As it got closer to wedding day, I decided I should try to find a babysitter for Little Man so I could actually stay for the reception without worrying about a very sleepy little boy.  Around this same time Sweet Pea was invited to sleep over at a friend's house and wanted to go to that instead of the wedding, after checking with the family I gave her permission to go to the sleep-over.  Our good friends Jeni and Chris agreed to watch Little Man for us, and I was left with just Babydoll!

Jeni offered to watch Babydoll as well, but after a couple minutes of consideration (she was having fun playing with Jeni's daughter) I decided that I needed to bring her with me.

I've been going to Sound of Music rehearsals every night for the past 7 weeks, and most of those nights I left home with a crying Babydoll.  She begs me to stay, clings to my leg, climbs into my lap, and sadly watches me drive away. 

Sad huh?

So I knew we really needed some time together, just the two of us, to play and dance and have some quality bonding time!  She even got to wear makeup for our special evening!

Let me tell you, when you are used to taking 3 kids to events and holidays and things, taking just 1 kid feels like a piece of cake!  A piece of wedding cake! haha, I'm so funny.... um... yeah.

I'm beginning to realize why the middle child gets such a bad rap for lack of attention, when I realized I would be taking just Babydoll to the wedding I sadly realized I could not remember the last time I did anything outside of the yard with just her!  I take Sweet Pea on big kid things, and Little Man goes with just me when his big sisters are doing something together with someone else, but my little middle child just never gets pulled out of the group and taken places with just me!  Sad!

We had the best time that night!  We played in the lawn of the gardens before the ceremony started, we ate together and drank out of fancy glasses together.  We took pictures together at the little photo booth they had set up.  And we danced together.

Now she wasn't stuck with just me the whole time, there were three other little girls her same age at the reception and they had a great time dancing and running around in circles for a couple hours.

When it was time to go home we got in the car to pick up Little Man first, and I told her that if she was sleeping when we got to Chris and Jeni's then I'd let her sleep while I went in to grab Little Man, so if she woke up and I wasn't there, then I was just picking up Little Man and would be back in the car soon.  She assured me that she would stay awake the whole time.

5 minutes later she was out like a light!

We had the best time together!

Wishful Wednesday

I wish for simlicity.

I wish for an extremely successful opening night this friday!

I wish for an extremely successful 8 shows for that matter!

Your turn!  What are you wishing for?

Sometimes you feel like a nut

Sometimes you feel like a nut...

Sometimes you don't :o)

A couple weeks ago I had to get a head shot for the Sound of Music program.  I just had Spencer take a picture of me one morning. 

Which one should I have used?  I wonder what kind of parts I would get with that first one!