thanksgiving 2019

we had a great thanksgiving yesterday with our families at my parents' house.  we ate, visited, relaxed, loved up the kitties, and then ate some more.  hope your thanksgiving was lovely too.  happy black friday!

love, laurie

. . . 

past thanksgivings: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018

happy thanksgiving!

happy thanksgiving!  we have so much to be thankful for, and it's so nice to have a day set aside to reflect on what we are grateful for in our lives.  today we're looking forward to spending time with our families and of course eating way too much.

have a wonderful thanksgiving day!

love, laurie

an easy last-minute thanksgiving decoration

wow, i can't believe that thanksgiving is tomorrow!  seriously, where did november go?  if thanksgiving snuck up on you and you're looking for a last-minute cute craft, check out these adorable toilet paper pumpkins!

happy thanksgiving eve!

love, laurie

we're still going . . .

12+ hours yesterday setting up for the twelve twenty-four show, and we're at it again today and tomorrow!

my favorite view of rehearsal is always this . . .

looking forward to a day off work on thursday for thanksgiving!

love, laurie

getting ready for the theatre holiday season

it may be thanksgiving week to the rest of the outside world, but here inside the theatre it's tech week for the kick off of the christmas season.  right after thanksgiving, we start our series of christmas shows with a holiday rock orchestra called twelve twenty-four (very much like trans-siberian orchestra).  today is load in day followed by lots of tech rehearsal. 

i usually don't like to listen to any christmas music prior to december 1st, but working in this industry, i have to make an exception.  it's going to be several long days in a row to get this show ready for saturday.  i'm looking forward to having thursday off for thanksgiving!

love, laurie

t.g.i.f.

thank goodness it's friday and that we don't have any shows this weekend (the one we originally had was postponed and i'm thrilled about it)!  i saw this image on instagram this week and it perfectly summed up my brain.  this week was all about running all over the county for different meetings in different directions.  i definitely put on a lot of miles.  i felt like a human pinball game.  i'm so thrilled it's friday and so thrilled to have a "free" weekend this weekend because it will be my last until the new year!

have a great weekend!

love, laurie

desperate times . . .

my co-worker and i froze our tushes off for a full week at work when our heat went down.  of course the heat died during the coldest temperatures!  it was in the 20s outside and our office was only 58 degrees inside.  it was cold!!!

we wore our jackets, huddled under blankets, and had space heaters going.  we joked about bringing pajamas to work and then one day my co-worker actually brought her adult chewbacca pajamas to work and we couldn't stop laughing.  i just had to take a picture!

thank goodness the heat eventually got fixed and we're back to being a reasonable temperature now!

love, laurie

cuddle up for warmth!

it has been soooooooo cold lately.  it feels more like january than november.  leko has been cuddling close to stay warm, and i don't blame him one bit!

love, laurie

hey, that's me!

one of the local theatres where ryan and i work brings the national tours of broadway musicals to town regularly.  it's always a treat to get to work on these full-scale broadway shows while they're on the road.  recently, our local venue produced a short commercial to advertise some upcoming shows for the remainder of their season.  i was watching the commercial on instagram and leapt up and said "hey, that's me!" when i recognized myself in the first few seconds of the commercial.  i only appear for a split-second, but i'm there!  it was filmed while i was working the load in of "a bronx tale" last month.  it took me a few trys but i was able to screen shot it at the moment where i appear.  here's the commercial.  see if you can spot me (i'm in the very beginning)!

love, laurie

judy collins

on saturday we worked a concert performed by the legendary judy collins at our theatre.  judy collins is such an icon.  she has written 55 albums, is a grammy-award winner, and is still touring and performing 120 shows per year at the age of 80!

it was incredible to see her perform in person.  it was a lot of work over the last few months to get this show on the stage, but it was worth it because the audience absolutely loved it.  this is one show i really wish i could have taken pictures of on my camera, but i couldn't so ryan was able to sneak two photos on his phone from way up at his spotlight perch for me.  (thanks, ryan!)

love, laurie

what's lurking in your fridge?

our house has something orange and furry in our fridge on a regular basis.  it's not something growing mold, it's our fur baby who loves to be chilly!

i had to laugh when i saw that today is national clean out your refrigerator day.  leko likes to clear out space in our fridge to fit his body in different sections!

have a great weekend!

love, laurie

fall cleanup

sunday morning brought a little bit of free time, weather above freezing, and no rain, so that meant i jumped on my chance to run outside and attack the leaves that had fallen.  it kept me busy for quite some time while ryan was at work, but i did it and filled 7 buckets full of leaves to be picked up by our city.  i could have kept going but actually ran out of buckets.  that's a lot of leaves for 1/5 of an acre of land!  i'm definitely glad i got it done just in time before we got our first snow fall this week!

love, laurie

promoting the theatre

my co-worker and i were promoting our theatre this week at a local vendor fair for seniors.  i'm glad another one of our co-workers snapped a picture of us, because we rarely get our picture taken together.

love, laurie

birthday celebrations

we carved a little bit of time out last weekend to celebrate my dad's birthday!  my mom made a delicious dinner with german chocolate cake for dessert.  it was nice to get together to celebrate!

love, laurie

veterans day flags

for the past several years, the student veterans alliance at the university where i teach has displayed thousands of american flags on campus in honor of veterans day.  this year they did their "flags for the fallen campaign" again, displaying thousands of american flags on the campus lawn.  each flag represents a fallen service member.  the flags are on display all week and it's really something to see the thousands of flags arranged in perfectly straight lines, blowing gently in the breeze.

love, laurie

behind the scenes

there are a lot of preparations in place for our upcoming large-scale production of the nutcracker in december.  in addition to testing the snow and fog, we hopped outside two weeks ago to shoot some teaser promo photos to advertise that this production will be moving to our venue this year.  there were several different poses which involved me (and even ryan too) pretending to move the nutcracker to its new home at our theatre. 

ryan snuck a behind-the-scenes photo of one of the poses.  i can't wait to see the final version of all of these images when the photographer is done editing them.  i'll be sure to share them.

love, laurie

oops

hey folks, this is what happens to a lamp (a theater lighting bulb) inside an instrument (a theatre lighting fixture) when you get too much liquid snow chemical inside!

love, laurie

jealous!

i was jealous when ryan texted me this picture of him and leko cuddling the other day.  i couldn't wait to rush home to join the two of them!

love, laurie

a crazy weekend of super crazy shows

wow, it was a nutty weekend! ryan and i bounced back-and-forth between 3 different shows at 3 different venues.  ryan kicked off the weekend by working a 3-day gig for a touring disney jr. holiday show (no pictures of that because it was too crazy).  i worked a movie / live action showing of the rocky horror picture show, then we both worked an eagles tribute concert.

all 3 gigs were a bit of a nightmare in their own ways, but the eagles tribute really took the cake in terms of being a disaster in every way possible. 

i'm glad all 3 of these shows are behind us and that we can move on to the next set of shows now. 

one of the subjects i teach is university-level theatre.  i always tell my students "there's no such thing as a bad show, because even if a show is absolutely horrible at least you'll learn what not to do next time."  i think this weekend really tested by belief in "there's never a bad show" because i'm still shaking my head at how crazy these 3 events were.

on to the next!

love, laurie

happy birthday, papa!

happy birthday today to my awesome papa!

love, laurie

xoxo

halloween 2019

last night was halloween!  we knew that ryan had to work at the theater, so my dad came up to keep me company and we celebrated by doing trick-or-treating at my house.  i pieced together a costume last minute by using my ballet costume from my dance recital in 2017 paired with my mask from my birthday party in 2018.  the colors in the mask matched my dance recital costume perfectly, so i decided to call myself masquerade from the phantom of the opera, and my dad dressed up in his austin powers costume.

earlier in the week, before we heard the weather forecast, we went to the store and bought a bunch of halloween candy because we typically get a ton of trick-or-treaters at our house every year.  it wasn't until later in the week (after we already took all of the candy out of the bags) that we heard the forecast calling for lots of rain and high winds.  some neighboring towns even cancelled their trick-or-treat.

luckily, our town kept trick-or-treat on and as a nice surprise ryan came home earlier than expected so he got to celebrate with us a little bit too!  we had dinner while we waited for the trick-or-treaters and then handed out candy.  all together we had 101 trick-or-treaters (which is our lowest number of trick-or-treaters ever since we've lived in this house)!  

even though it was rainy and windy, we still had a lot of fun!  i took far less photos this year than previous years since it was so wet outside, but we did manage to snap a few on our phones inside.

hope everyone had a happy halloween!

love, laurie

. . . 

previous halloweens: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018