There's No Christmas Like a Home Christmas

I know it's possible that I'm a little biased here, but I'm pretty sure I have the best family. Ever. Which is why I was especially grateful that I got to go home for Christmas this year. It was my first Christmas in Virginia since 2006, and if that wasn't awesome enough, I got my biggest Christmas wish: for all four of my brothers to be at my parent's house, too. I swear it was a miracle.

There's something so magical to me about my mother's Christmas decorations. No matter how long I spend on my own decorations, they never seem as good to me as my mom's.

For years my dad's job required him to do a lot of traveling, which resulted in my parent's starting a collection of nativity scenes from different countries. My mom sets them up without the babies, and on Christmas Eve we place the babies in the scenes. I love this one. It's from Guatemala.

It's funny the things that you get attached to. I love, love, love the little toy ornaments on this garland.

I wish I had more pictures, but the truth is that most of the time I was having too much fun to go find my camera. I'm just glad that I caught this moment of my dad demonstrating his black magic skills to two of his grandsons.

My brothers and husband were good enough help transmit the necessary brainwaves.

Camden got REALLY into it. 

And in other, not as fun news, Jacob and I were asked to be Santa and Mrs. Clause at a church party a few weeks ago. It was kind-of horrible and not something that we'll ever do again, but I enjoyed giving myself white hair and wrinkles, and I'm pretty sure Santa has never looked so good.

And I also met my goal of making a homemade wreath this year; first time I've ever made one. I didn't really know what I was doing. Luckily wreaths are pretty forgiving. I had the inspired idea of getting the greenery from Home Depot because they cut the bottoms off of their live trees before they sell them, so they had trash cans full of branches that they let me dig through and take whatever I wanted for free. They were very nice about it. And I was happy to have a wreath that smells amazing.

*Sigh*. I think Christmas may have been perfect this year. It may have been a short trip, and I may have been crying the night before we left because I was so overwhelmed, and we may have woken up at 3:30 on the morning of our flight because the roads were so icy from the huge snowstorm we got two days before, and the turbulence on the landing may have been so bad that I threw up on the plane for the first time since I was a kid, but dang. It was so worth it.

Hope you had a very merry Christmas, too.

This is Halloween

Okay people, we're just about caught up to the present time. I have to rush through autumn real quick because, let's be honest, I really want to talk about the awesomeness of Christmas. So here goes.

Overall, things were pretty boring. I picked up some transcribing work, which meant that I sat at a computer for several hours a day for several weeks in a row. I actually enjoyed it a lot, but that doesn't mean I should blog about it any more.

Halloween came and went. Jacob went to work dressed like a pirate. I was jealous.

We carved pumpkins.

I very seriously considered turning all of our lights off on Halloween evening and pretending we weren't home, but Jacob's co-worker found out my plan and called me a Halloween Grinch. I relented, bought candy, turned on all the lights, and lit the jack-o-lanterns. We had about five trick-or-treaters come by and ended up with a huge bowl of candy. I learned my lesson. Next year I will be a Halloween Grinch.

The end.

Of Those Who Love

I made it back to Missouri from Virginia in early August. Life was quieting down. My sister's children got the chicken pox so I had a few days of helping them, but for the most part things were falling into a routine. I started looking for a job. I unpacked the boxes that I had ignored during the musical.

About two weeks later, we got a phone call from Jacob's mother telling us that his grandmother wasn't doing well and was in the hospital. There was some confusion about her condition, but at first it didn't appear to be too serious. We started praying for her health and healing but other than that we weren't too worried. But the days passed and slowly more and more bad news reached us, until finally the worst news of all: the doctor had decided that there wasn't anything more that anyone could do. The family made arrangements for Grandma to go home for her last few days, and Jacob and I booked a last-minute flight to say goodbye to her.

We got there just in time. She was alert and coherent just enough for us to have a few last minutes with her, and then she passed away the next day. The room was packed with family who had come to say goodbye. I looked around and was touched to think of how loved this woman was.

Jacob and I with his maternal grandparents on the day we left to move to Missouri. Our last picture with Grandma.

It is impossibly difficult saying goodbye to someone you love. Even though I had only known Grandma for about six years, I loved her very much. She was amazingly kind to me. She always treated me like I was one of her own grandchildren. And I love her because she was such a wonderful grandmother to Jacob. I know that he is the great man that he is in large part because of her influence. Every life she touched, she changed for the better.

The days following Grandma's passing were incredibly sad. Every time I felt overwhelmed by it, I found peace in remembering that this would be the last time I'd have to say goodbye to her. Next time I see her she'll be healthy and without pain. She was first diagnosed with cancer over forty years ago; even though it took her in the end, she fought it hard and for a long time. I sometimes have to remind myself that even though I have a lot of fun memories of her, I never really knew her when she wasn't in pain. She was just so selfless that she didn't complain about it very often. I'm grateful that is over for her. I'm grateful I'll have a chance to continue building a relationship with her.

I'm grateful for the life she lived and the choices she made that left so many of us grieving for her. It does hurt to say goodbye, but it's a price I pay willingly for having the privilege of knowing her.

Home and the Heartland

Just a few days after the final performance of Into the Woods, I drove with my sister and her children to Virginia for Orrville 2012! Yahoo!

I've fallen out of habit of taking pictures at our family reunion because:
1. Vacation to me means a lot of sleeping, reading, and one-on-one conversations with family members I don't see often enough, and none of these activities are very photo worthy, and
2. There are some very talented photographers in my family, and I ultimately know that their pictures will all turn out better than mine anyway.

However, I did go on a sunset hike one evening with my two oldest nephews and couldn't resist snapping a few of my own pictures.

I think of all places on earth, the Blue Ridge is the one where I feel most naturally at home. I guess I need to build a house on this mountaintop.

I was grateful to sneak in a little extra time with two of my nephews, especially because just a few weeks later this one left on his mission to California.

We sure do miss him, especially with the holiday season here, but we're pretty proud of him, too.

I Have No Experience with Princes and Castles and Gowns

I feel kind-of sheepish that this is the first time I've updated my blog since our move to Missouri. I have soooo much to talk about - I have once again been reminded of how difficult it is to find time to blog when life is busy. It's kind-of ironic because I'm actually not working right now. A lot of people ask me how I can be so busy when I'm not working. That's a good question. Let me tell you what I've been up to!

First things first, and this goes WAY back to six months ago when we first moved here (wow, I can't believe we've already been here for six months!) A couple of days after we arrived I overheard my sister's friend mention that a community theatre about half an hour away was holding auditions for their summer production Into the Woods. I immediately and very rudely jumped into the conversation. I LOVE Into the Woods. It's my favorite musical. I knew I had to audition - without any acting experience I wasn't expecting a good role, but shoot, I'd be happy as a tree in that show.

I immediately started memorizing a monologue and practicing a solo for the audition. I had four days to put it together. If that wasn't overwhelming enough, I also got a stomach flu the evening I found out about the audition, and spent the next four days unable to keep any food down. I was so sick that I couldn't read the monologue I was supposed to be memorizing. I felt better on the day of the audition, but it felt silly to audition then. I knew I wasn't ready. But I reminded myself that I was okay with being cast as a tree, and if I needed to embarrass myself to make that happen, it was worth it to me. I got into the car and drove off before my courage failed me.

The audition was terrifying. I completely blanked on my monologue halfway through so badly that I had to apologize. Luckily, my solo was way better than I had ever practiced it (thank you auditorium acoustics!), and I did decently on my cold readings. I was so embarrassed when the director asked me what my acting experience was and I had to say, "Nothing." But I was thrilled when I got an invitation to come to call backs a few days later, and a few days after call backs I was offered the role of Cinderella! I was absolutely shocked and totally excited. I was screaming and jumping up and down after I hung up the phone. Jacob commented later that he never knew I could jump so high!

Cinderella with her step-mother and step-sisters.

If you don't know anything about Into the Woods, it's a mix of several fairy tales that all run into each other. The first act is very light and funny, and the second act is kind-of dark and sad. I think of the first act as being the fairy tales and the second act being what happens when fairy tale characters meet real life.

Cinderella is written to be very clumsy. She routinely falls down during the play.
It was fun, but I was pretty black and blue by the end!

It's a somewhat small production. There are twenty-one named characters; some of our cast members had more than one role, so we had a cast of nineteen. Of those nineteen characters, fifteen of them have solos. It is a very solo-heavy production; more so than any other musical I can think of. Cinderella has one song that is entirely solo and then has solos in six other songs. For someone who has never acted and has never performed a solo EVER in her life, I was totally overwhelmed. The other leads were very experienced and intuitive, and I felt really far behind them. I worked hard to catch up. Luckily we had a great director who put a lot of time into coaching me. On a typical day I practiced at home for about three hours, then went to the auditorium to receive one-on-one coaching or to help build sets and stayed for rehearsal afterwards, ending up in at least six hours spent at the auditorium. For many weeks, Into the Woods was my entire life.

The woman who sewed the costumes did an incredible job. I enjoyed wearing a huge, fancy ball gown, but the layers of petticoats and hoop skirts combined with the gloves and royalty cape in this scene were uncomfortably warm under stage lights! When the director would stop a scene during dress rehearsals I would pick up my layers of skirts and fan myself with them. Luckily I wore bloomers to keep myself modest.

The performances were so amazing. I had a wonderful time. It was really stressful at first - waiting backstage on opening night I thought for sure I was going to either throw up or burst into sobs (the sobbing won out, which meant a very hurried trip to the make-up director before I went on stage). The director told me that the nerves would die down by the time I delivered my fourth line, and he was right. From that moment on, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Ugh. I hated this scene. It just never felt right. I'm very grumpy that this picture turned out so well.

I've spent the last few months trying to figure out how I could pull scenes from the DVD onto my blog so I could show some of my favorite parts. I think (*fingers crossed*) I finally got it.

This scene holds a special place in my heart. I'm not sure why. I thought it'd be fun to post because of all of the amazing costumes. You can see me run in on the line, "Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor."

Cinderella's first fall of the night.

It took me until a couple days before opening night to do this scene without laughing. The poor director  just about had a heart attack. "Cinderella, you CANNOT LAUGH in this scene!" I know, I know. But the birds are so dang funny.

This is part of "Your Fault" with the Baker, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack (of the Beanstalk), the Witch, and Cinderella. I'm back in my rags costume by this point.

Last third of "No One is Alone", a [mostly] duet between Cinderella and the Baker. Jack and Little Red are also in this scene. I love this song. A few minutes before everybody is arguing and blaming each other (see above), but eventually come to this conclusion that all people make mistakes and you can't just not do anything because you're worried about messing things up. A good message for all of us, I think.

And happy ever after. Huzzah for trying new things!