water park fun

we live less than one hour away from the largest indoor water park in the country, but we never tried it out until this past weekend.  we were blessed with a bit of free time over memorial day weekend (and ryan was able to score us free passes!!!) so we headed over to the water park and met up with my parents on friday afternoon to check it out. 

we had a lot of fun and were pleasantly surprised by all the water park had to offer.  we sure got a good work out running around to the different water slides.  it felt good to relax our sore bodies in the giant hot tub at the end of the evening before heading home.

it was a fun way to kick off the unofficial start of summer with a water adventure!

love, laurie

a hike to kick off summer

after stuffing our faces on saturday, we worked off some of our picnic lunch by taking a hike around a lake at a local park.  the weather was so nice and it felt so good to be able to be outside and enjoy nature!  i'm keeping my fingers crossed for lots of good weather this year because i'm looking forward to fitting in more hikes and bike rides!

love, laurie

memorial day weekend

it was so nice to have a day off on saturday to get together with our parents to celebrate memorial day weekend with a picnic on the back porch.  it felt like we were kicking off summer right!

love, laurie

happy memorial day

happy memorial day

love, laurie

happy long weekend!

i'm super excited to have a long holiday weekend where we actually have a few moments off!  i can't even believe it, we haven't had a weekend without a show in months!

memorial day always feels like the official start of summer to me, and i'm so very ready for summer to begin!

have a wonderful weekend!

love, laurie

porch time for kitten

so grateful for some nice weather last night for leko to finally be able to enjoy our screen porch!

love, laurie

signs of spring

it's nice to finally see some signs of spring in our yard with some colorful flowers popping up!

love, laurie

moving day

it's official!  over the weekend ryan's parents moved out of their old house and into their new house near us.  (remember when we rented a u-haul and helped them move some of their stuff into storage here and here?)

ryan snapped these two pictures on his phone when the moving trucks first pulled up in the morning to load everything up and then at the end of the day when they were packed and ready to leave the old house.

over the last few days, ryan's parents have been unpacking in their new house.  we're happy to have them so close by now!

love, laurie

tunnel of light

i snapped this picture on friday in the theatre when ryan and i were setting lights for the shows we had this weekend.  ryan was in the space between the cyc and the scrim and the lights made him look like he was in an bright orange tunnel.  it was a cool effect in person that didn't entirely translate to a photo, but i snapped one on my phone anyway to remember it.

happy monday!  we're beyond delirious this morning!

love, laurie

happy friday!

wow, this week went by fast!  it's hard to believe that it's already friday.  we have another busy weekend ahead of us with a lot of rehearsals and performances.

i can never resist a picture of my cutie pie when he cuddles up with me at night after a long day of work!

have a great one!

love, laurie

chugging along with spring show season

the past week has wiped us out with 14 shows at 4 different venues in a 1 week time span!  last night we crossed one more show off our spring show season list with the final music concert of the season.  of course we have more shows this weekend!

love, laurie

my favorite cuddle kitten

can never resist snapping a picture of this cute guy when he cuddles up with me on top of blankets!

love, laurie

celebrating mother's day!

we found a quick spare moment in between everything this weekend to celebrate mother's day with my mom.  although it was brief, it was nice to take a minute to have dinner and dessert with my mama on mother's day before running back off to work!

we had to take a raincheck on celebrating mother's day with ryan's mom, but we hope to celebrate with her soon!

happy mother's day!

love, laurie

snapshots from the weekend

this weekend, ryan worked several shows of beautiful at one theatre while i worked a graduation and a dance recital at a different theatre.   we both set up another graduation at the outdoor arena, and then we both loaded out beautiful back at the theatre.  it sure was a jam-packed weekend!

in other news, a humongous highlight of the weekend for me was trying my hand at up rigging for the very first time and succeeding!  i'm incredibly proud of myself because this has been a personal goal of mine for about two years.  all of the sore muscles are worth it because i can't believe i finally got a chance to do it!

love, laurie

a very, very rough week

since i'm not actually in the room with you right now and you can't hear me, just imagine me taking a very long sigh right now . . .

. . . wheph, this week has been a long and rough one, and although it's friday, it's far from over.  i feel like the stupidity of so many things around me this week has beaten me down.  looking back, there was really only one highlight of my week and that was seeing beautiful on wednesday night. 

this weekend is power packed and is going to show no mercy with multiple shows happening back-to-back.  tis show season, and that's to be expected, but i certainly could have done without all of the other idiocy from the week.  check back in on monday to see if we make it through the weekend with our sanity intact. 

love, laurie

"beautiful" the carole king musical

broadway tour season is coming to a close this week with the national tour of "beautiful" the carole king musical.  the show came into town monday afternoon, and we worked the two-day load in to get the show up and ready for opening night on tuesday.  it's running through this weekend and we'll load it out late sunday night.

last week i mentioned that i went on local tv to promote an educational workshop for students that we put together for beautiful.  the workshop was last night.  the students had a chance to meet the production stage manager from the tour, meet members of our local stagehands union, and tour the backstage.  we all then saw the show and capped off the night after the show with a talk-back with members from the cast.

overall, the workshop went great and the students really seemed to enjoy it.  i was happy to have the chance to see the show, especially since i worked the load in and will be working the load out, and because ryan has a running position on this show as the head of props!  what i wasn't expecting was to have my seat get a major upgrade last minute to a box seat!  it was an unexpected yet awesome perk because of my help with the workshop as the chair of the education committee for the stagehands union.  it was also pretty awesome because i sat in the house right box which had a great view of back stage right where ryan was stationed for the show.  all of the committee members agreed that we felt like princesses for the evening sitting up in those box seats.  it was a pretty cool experience and the show was wonderful!  above are some pictures from last night.

love, laurie