My plays are both cast!!!

What a big relief and what a wonderful feeling. I'm VERY excited about the shows, and am looking forward to working with this crew. Every year there's a few people who are great actors, but either I don't connect with them, or they're egomaniacs, or they have a bad attitude or something - this year, I feel like that may not happen on this cast. This is a NICE cast of generally humble and compassionate people, which is really good. Anne's cast is also good, which is a very great feeling.

So - I'm blessed as of right now, we'll see if I feel the same at the end of the month, or February, but for now, I'm very excited about the people I'm going to be working with.

YAY!

School Play Auditions are HARD...

It's really tough in a play where the parts aren't terribly specific to pick people for roles. Whomever you put in a certain role, that person will add such a flavour in Flowers For Algernon that I could have an entirely different play depending on who gets put where. And when I have a number of strong candidates, and few who REALLY stood out, suddenly things become rather interesting.

SO...my job this year is not enjoyable, and is taking longer than usual as well, which also isn't fun. BUT I think that the PEOPLE I have are good people, and that's going to make for a more enjoyable play than having good actors who are full of themselves or not team players. With the content of the play, they'd better be good people.

Pray for me as I make these decisions. BLAH - the least fun part of my job.

What's Up in my life...

Well - if my life was a juggling act, the way it would look right now would be me with a bunch of balls in the air. Some are fun (like riding a motorcycle), some are work (dealing with pictures is consuming a lot of time right now), some are literally work (did you all know I'm the church secretary at my church?), and some are simply what comes with living (seeing friends, spending time with Brad, sleeping, eating etc). Now imagine that I have an incredibly able bodied assistant (because I'm not stupid enough to hire an un-able bodied assistant) who is holding three really big meat cleavers, or swords or flaming torches, (or one of each, what the heck, why not). In two weeks, my assistant will hurl those murderous weapons at my head as fast as possible. One I will attempt to catch is adding an almost full time job (teaching) to my current workload, adding a play with Gallery 7 into my evenings...and my weekends - HA!! For the first three weekends after school (and the play) begin I am consumed with things, one a mere Saturday, the other two full weddings, one of which is in Portland. After which weddings, I will have to once again process all the pictures & put together books & give people CD's and all of that. AUGHHH!!!

Not that I'm worried about it at all. My one concern is, IF (and that is still an IF) if there is a baby in the picture, and my exhaustion returns the way it did last time I was pregnant, then all the late nights and the time consumption and the lack of time to just rest & relax may suddenly become much too overwhelming. And if morning sickness is also involved, well, that would be like my cruel evil and yet incredibly able bodied assistant starting up a chainsaw and throwing that into the mix without me even knowing about it, because he decided to blindfold me first.

So, in conclusion - yes, I plan on being just slightly busy for the next two months, but after that, things will slow down to merely completely insane.

My two requests:
1. Pray (if you're the type)
2. Don't be offended if I don't call you every other night like I usually do, or bring you soup when you're sick, or clean your house on the weekends, or even if the blogging slows down a bit **GASP**, as you can see, I'm busy and can't handle any more chainsaws.

Such Fun...

Shooting weddings is a lot of fun and yesterday was wonderful. Andy & Cheryl were a great couple, and it's just fun to shoot people who both love getting their pictures taken, and know how to be goofy and serious, beautiful & serene and joyful and insane. It's great to be a part of things the way we get to be when we're taking pictures, to be able to help out during the day, and not just attend. I enjoy being able to be "back stage" and see all the behind the scenes stuff that goes on (perhaps that why I enjoy directing more than acting as well). The unseen work comes AFTER the wedding, just like in plays. The toughest jobs are the clean-up jobs, because everyone else thinks the play is over, and you KNOW there's still a lot of work to do, but the motivation to do it diminishes significantly. So - here's to the motivation needed to put ALL these weddings to rest!!

There's More To Life...? (aka "The Importance of Being Earnest")

I am a firm believer that there's more to life than simply a baby...after all, none of you know yet, and you've all got lots of stuff going on, as do we. We're involved in a number of weddings this spring and summer, taking lots of pictures, working and doing lots of creative and imaginative stuff (although I've been doing less since getting so tired). SO...here's an update on one of the most recent major creative endeavors of my life, that being my school play "The Importance of Being Earnest".

What did I do in the month of February, well, let me tell you. I painted a tree, drove in a moldy van with Brad to Vancouver and back twice, lifted and moved many heavy and not so heavy things. I made curtains out of garbage bags, I rode on and drove a scissor lift for the first time ever, I didn't eat dinner at times until 10:30 some nights, I stayed up on closing night until 4:00 in the morning and was in church the next day, I wrote probably 20 cheques, I broke even on the play, I got flowers from my students, I threatened to take someone out of the show 1/2 way through the run, I taped paper on windows, I repaired paper on windows... I directed, took notes, ran a tech rehearsal, two dress rehearsals, 4 shows (including a dessert evening with cheesecake) and left the school looking mostly like it did before we put on the show.

Now I would like to point out that none of this stuff was done alone, I had my wonderfully supportive husband and a great number of staff and students and parents from LCS involved in this show. What did people end up saying about the show? That it was incredible. Now, I can't take all the credit for this, the script is pretty amazing, my crew was incredible and with a small cast, some of the best actors in the school were involved, but it was great. My second year here we put on a massive 50 person show at "The Bell Centre", a huge theatre in the area, with tons of sets, costumes, and a professional crew that came with the theatre. We had flying sets, a full orchestra and more, but people are saying this is their favourite show in a long time. People congratulate me every year for a good show, but this year, people gushed. People couldn't stop talking about it, people loved it, even though it wasn't "The Music Man", it was amazing, and that's a GREAT tradition to be building in the school.

So, yes, it was a VERY busy February, but it was a wonderful time. I'm glad that part of who I am is "Director". I'm glad it's a skill I'm being given the opportunity to develop, and I intend to do just that. What does that mean for being a mom? Balancing, I guess. I've already been asked to direct for Gallery 7 next year again (a community theatre in the area), and I'm going to do it. I think it's important for little ones to know that us big people have things we are good at other than just being mommy & daddy, and it's a good thing for me to remember too. Theatre excites me, directing excites me, the relationships that are built excite me, and I hope to continue that even after my little one comes out and introduces himself (or herself as Brad likes to remind me) to me.

Introducing our baby...

That's right, we'd like to introduce you to our baby (still SO weird to write that...in fact, I don't know if I ever have before). Our little one has been around since the beginning of February sometime and I'm happy to say I couldn't give you an exact date. That means that during our school's production of "The Importance of Being Earnest" our baby was already growing and I like to tell Brad that if it can survive it's first week-ish of life in that amount of stress and busyness, then it's a pretty tough baby.

We found out we were pregnant on February 20th and this was my reaction:
This morning I took the pregnancy test. I bought it last night and was super nervous, even though I figured I was since I was supposed to start my period Monday, and I'm never late - and sometimes a couple days early. I told Brad after eating some breakfast (I was starving - go figure!) and he was lying in bed. It was weird because I was lying beside him, stroking his hair thinking "I know something that is going to completely change your life, and you won't know until I tell you". Crazy. Then I told him. He opened his eyes really wide, looked a little shocked, and then went right back to sleep again. A bit later he opened his eyes again and looked at me and just smiled. Very cool. He told me later that he was just checking to see if I was telling the truth or just joking around. I was telling the truth... And so it all begins...

And that was exactly it. I went to work and had to pretend that everything was normal and that nothing was going on. So easy! It felt like every conversation around me was about babies and all I wanted to do was tell everyone, but I couldn't. So I didn't. Which means that none of you even know yet...but soon you will!