A Christmas Carol Pictures

It's been a fun holiday season so far! We've been so busy with the play that I still haven't put up our Christmas tree. We took the day off yesterday and today to relax and get the house in order before resuming our regular life. Community theater can be very involved and I'm worn out. Nevertheless, it was a memorable experience and I highly recommend it for everyone.














Dewberry not only acted on stage as Martha Cratchit, but she and her sisters were also given the awesome responsibility of backstage runners. What that means is that the stage manager communicated to Dewberry via the headset and all three girls coordinated getting the actors on deck for their specific scenes. They were great at it!!




















Good job girls!




















Boysenberry entertained people backstage.
















This is Strawberry and Dewberry posing for another picture. We all went picture crazy and I'm glad we did!







































Here is Raspberry smiling after having her hair done up so nicely. She was Fan, Scrooges' sister.




































Mr. Hollywood




















I just love this picture of Strawberry looking out the window while waiting for everyone to get their hair and makeup done.




















Two sisters having fun together! They'll always remember this time together.



































Dewberry is in costume and ready to begin working at rounding up the actors and keeping everyone quiet and orderly. Please don't slam the doors!




















Silverberry is relaxing before heading on deck for his scene.




















Silverberry was Businessman 2 and he's with his fellow actor, Businessman 1.




















Here I am with two of my girls. I don't have any normal pictures of me because it took a while to get myself in costume so I started applying it as soon as we arrived at the theater each day. I did my own makeup along with two other spirit grips.














See my eyes? Cool, eh? I tolerated the contacts well enough, although the first night was like torture. Thankfully the eye doctor (Ghost of Christmas Future) was patient with me.














Here is the Businessmen scene!














Boysenberry was Peter Cratchit. He did a wonderful job in that role!














This is Dewberry acting out her part, with Strawberry in back as Belinda Cratchit.














The Cratchit family














The pictures of the spirit grips were hard to get because it is dark when we float out changing the scenes. It was a lot of fun and I miss it already! I am the spirit in the lower right corner.





























That's me, taking the crossroads sign off stage! It was fun twirling around with that thing.














A family picture! I was going to send out Christmas cards with this picture, but I'm not sure people would understand my costume without a good explanation.














Silverberry and Blueberry















These are my fellow spirit grips. We all became good friends and I look forward to seeing them again at the theater for future productions. What a great bunch of ladies!!















Here we are acting scary. I'm in the lower left corner. Oh, and I made my own costume!















And here is Boysenberry entertaining everyone again.


































At the end of Sunday's performance, we acted out requested scenes for the cast. One scene was the "Ottoman Scene" where I am sitting on the ottoman and two other spirit grips pulled me out. I had to act dead and then I did my floating and twirling on stage to kill time and give our Scrooge time to change. I played for the audience acting creepy and enjoying the music. I had a blast doing it! The cast applauded when I exited the stage and it felt great! I've never had that before! When I was a kid I used to pretend for my stuffed animals that I was performing and imagine the applause, but wow, the real thing is so uplifting.

My husband and I were complimented many times on our kids throughout the production. The girls were given responsibilities that are normally given to adults, but the stage manager and head of the crew team saw that my girls were capable of taking on the responsibility. I am a proud mother tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't know about anybody else, but I am thoroughly enjoying my weekend off. I've indulged too much in mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey, pumpkin and chocolate pie, but the scale hasn't turned against me yet. No worries, I'll be working off all those extra calories for the next 8 days during play practice.

I have moved up to a "spirit grip", which is the director's use of the "misery of the phantoms" in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There are seven of us spirit grips, and we change the scenes while swaying around acting "ghostly". It's fun actually, and a good workout, especially with the creepy music!

Tomorrow begins our first makeup and dress rehearsal and I'm not looking forward to wearing the white contacts.

We kept our Thanksgiving small and relaxing in anticipation for the full week ahead. Thankfully our friends came to visit yesterday and the kids had a really good time making movies and goofing off being silly.

Yes, I know Silverberry's and Boysenberry's hair is too long, but we'll get it cut after the play is over. Actually, we'll all be due for a good trim by then!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I haven't had the television on at all, and it's been so nice. I'm thinking about watching a movie I got from Netflix called Island on Bird Street. It's about a boy that gets separated from his father in Poland during Nazi occupation. It's a true story and our library has the book so I'll probably read it this winter when things aren't so hectic around here.

On another note, I have to remember to fix Dewberry's bloomers for her costume. I should do that before I kick back and watch a movie.

Birthday!

We had a good time yesterday celebrating Boysenberry's birthday!

This birthday was a treasure hunt birthday, with Boysenberry reading clues at each location that led to another location, accumulating the items to complete his birthday gifts.

He's been wanting a Peter (Narnia) costume for a long time, and Silverberry made him a shield and sword to go with it.

Yep, that's me and my "baby" boy!




















All dressed up and ready for battle.




















Finally, a helmet that fits!




















Thanking his sisters for helping to make his birthday memorable.














Mom is helping cut the rest of the birthday cake.

















Strawberry and Raspberry














Having fun during family game night.

To Keep Me Busy-A Second Baby Blanket

This is the second baby blanket that I have made for a future grandchild. The first one can be found here. I found this pattern at a garage sale this summer and I just knew that I had to make it. It was a lot of fun and easy to work up. It also provided something for me to do during this very tense election season.

Why am I making baby blankets now, when my children are probably years away from marriage and parenthood? The answer is easy, because I am not guaranteed tomorrow. Nobody knows what the future holds or how many days we have left on this earth. I decided to get started on making a pile of baby blankets, crocheted and quilted, and stash them away in a type of hope chest for my kids to be able to choose from for each of their new babies, just in case I am not here to do it.

The message I want my children to pass on to their children is that they were loved, wanted, and cherished long before they were even born.

What's That I Hear?

Silence!!

My phone has finally stopped ringing. My mailbox is empty and there isn't anything hanging off my doorknobs.

I feel like I have been freed from the prison of propaganda!

That is one thing to be happy about today.

The Wizard of Oz and 2008 Political Candidates

I haven't been able to find the source to give credit for the picture, but I wanted to post in on the blog because it's just too funny. It's amazing, don't you think?

Look closely and see if you can see any resemblance to our presidential and vice presidential candidates.

It Wasn't So Long Ago

It wasn't so long ago that our country had a leader such as this. For the past few years I've looked around me and have been frightened at the utter lack of leadership in this country and how quickly we have decayed from political correctness.

Not only does former President Ronald Reagan tell us the importance of accurate history, he also gives parenting advice.

I would be lost if my family and I didn't have our regular dinnertime discussions. It's a time when we unite while talking about the daily events, lessons learned in school, laughing at funny moments throughout the day, or reminiscing of days past.

November 4th is almost upon us. My phone rings a few times a day with recorded messages and my mailbox is bombarded with fliers of political candidates.

Will November 4th be the tipping point?



"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." - Ronald Reagan

Packing a Lunch

Spiders turned out to be fun subjects to photograph this fall. The title of the post says it all.

Autumn Pictures

Boysenberry ran inside yesterday afternoon to tell me how beautiful our tree is this year! I love the different colors in this picture from the beautiful blue sky, to the green tree in the background, and then the vibrant orange-red of the oak tree in the foreground




























I like this eerie picture because the old house behind it adds to the creepy feel of the web and spider.













This is a little bird that visited me while I was outside painting our shutters earlier this month. It was hopping around eating the corn that the squirrels dropped all over the driveway.












This is our "baby" Magellan. He's such a good cat and lets me snuggle him just like I used to do my own kids when they were babies. He tolerates so much and has a personality similar to Boysenberry's. Of course, Boysenberry caught him when he was a little stray kitten and hardly ever let him down. He's used to being carried and carted around since about five weeks old.

Corn Maze

We tromped through a large corn maze with flashlights earlier in October. It was a perfect night for it and we had a good time.

They had 10 checkpoints where we had to answer civics questions that pertained to this election year. I am happy to say that I answered all 10 correctly. They were easy for me, but I overheard a college student say "It's sad that my parents paid for college and I can't even answer this one".

Yep, very sad indeed!

I never went to college.

Below are some pictures of our family outing. It was hard to get pictures to turn out because it was so dark and when I pressed the button, the flash was a big surprise.

No, we didn't see any aliens because they were scared off by all the obnoxious church youth groups that were there an hour before us. It started off as an irritating night, but after they left it calmed down was more pleasant.

Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church (Paul Washer)

I'm listening to this sermon now and I must say, it's like a blast from the past. I haven't heard preaching like this in a long, long time. I like it! Oh, how I wish churches around here would wake up!

To My Child

You are the trip I did not take
You are the pearls I cannot buy
You are my blue Italian lake
You are my piece of foreign sky.

by Anne Campbell