Week with No Rehearsals

One would think that because I didn't have rehearsal this week I would have updated on the blog sooner. Sorry for my laziness. I have quite a few things this week I am excited to share.

First of all, Daniel is doing well. Luckily, Thursday evening of his birthday they were having a little party for the officers and Staff NCOs. Apparently they were celebrating a certain part of training that ended. I was glad he was able to relax for some part of his day. He seemed to be thankful for not having to work that evening.
He is ready to be home as well. We are both counting down the days and looking forward to the two months we have together before he is off again. His cellphone coverage remains to be bad so we communicate mostly through email. He did say when he was able to check his voicemails that he was happy to hear all the loving birthday messages from family. So thank you for calling him on that day even though you didn't get to chat with him. It made the day special.

After the weekend of shows, I rested up and I decided that I had to tackle the yard. Our lawn had grown quite long since Daniel left and I want it to look nice for Lolly and Kris's visit as well as keep the street looking nice. So this meant that I had to mow for the first time in my life. Military bases are a wonderful thing. There is a place called self-help on base that you can go and borrow all kinds of household up-keep items. They have mowers, drills, paint pans, weed-wackers, well just about everything you could need to keep the base housing look good. The best part about it is borrowing means completely free!

So I made my way over on Tuesday to borrow a mower. I had asked several questions of my Dad, the one who never let me mow; he enjoyed it too much. I felt pretty confident about the mowing job. I started and got the hang of it quickly. We have a couple difficult slopes on our side yard so I had to tug and push quite a bit, resulting in sore arm muscles the next day, but the lawn was mowed!

I realized around noon that I needed to edge the sides as well because we had weeds that were starting to crawl over the sidewalk and driveway. They looked quite bad. So I returned the mower that day and decided to weed-wack the next day. I am a weakling when it comes to doing work in the hot sun. I get bad headaches so I thought it was best to tackle the rest of the yard work the next day. I was already getting a headache by that point.

Tuesday evening I had Amaya over for dinner. We decided that we do not cook good food when our husbands are gone. (I have been eating salads and sandwiches due to my laziness in the evenings.) We are going to trade off some nights in the week to fix food at each others house so we can try new recipes and we are at least preparing for two. Tuesday night we had breakfast for dinner and I was able to use our waffle iron for the first time. Blueberry waffles...mmm.

Wednesday I wrapped up the yard work with weed-wacking and pruning the crazy ti bush in the front yard that was trying to hide our front door. In the afternoon I had AWANA. I was glad to be back with the kids. I had missed the week before due to rehearsals. I love hearing their progress and encouraging them in their memorization. After AWANA I went home ate dinner(leftovers) and went to see Wallace and Gromit, the movie, with some friends from the musical. It was a cute film. It had to have taken countless hours; it is all claymation.

Thursday started with a nice visit with Justin, Diane and Hailey stopping by the house for a little over an hour. It was great to be able to chat with them and hear about their stay in Hawaii. We all enjoyed playing with Meli and we made sure to get a picture of us before they left.

Thursday evening I went over to Amaya's for dinner. We made Thai food. We have a great picture of us making it in her kitchen. We enjoyed ourselves and I learned a new recipe.

I had a Key Volunteer meeting after dinner with Amaya. I was glad to be able to go to it because originally I was supposed to have rehearsal that evening but our director canceled it due to the excellent opening weekend. The meeting was great because I was able to meet a new wife that Amaya knows. Her husband is in 1/3 with Daniel. If that made any sense, basically we are going to be KVs together and she is a fun person to spend time with.

Friday morning Amaya, Jo ( the woman I had met at KVs) and I went shopping in Honolulu for Marine Corps Birthday Ball gowns. I am still searching for the right dress. I tried on about 50 dresses. It was exhausting but very fun. We went to several sweet boutiques and everything was ridiculously expensive. I am used to shopping for formal wear and getting great discounts. My Momma and I always found deals in Maryland for dance wear and all my formal recitals. I just have to keep looking. Despite the fact that I am a bargain hunter and we exhausted our time that day looking for a dress for me, we had a wonderful time! It is always great spending time with Amaya and getting to know Jo better was so much fun. Of course it was a beautiful day and that made it even nicer shopping.

Last night I returned to the musical life. Apparently there were two reviews that came out last week. One of them was completely negative except for a few comments about the singing and one was very pleasing. Thankfully I didn't read the negative article until after the musical. I had several people come up to me afterward in the lobby telling me the article was wrong, so I had to go and read it. Indeed it was negative about every person. The reviewer bashed my acting, he bashed the dance choreography, the energy of the show, and several voice of the leads. He must have been having a crummy day. The performance he came to was our best and he just may have fallen asleep or something. We have a great show going! The other review, like I said, had only positive things to say. He said we all were blessed with above-average singing capablilities, the acting was believable and the entire show was entertaining. It was funny to read such completely opposite reviews. Now we just have to prove the negative guy wrong in every show!

Here is a quick picture from last night's show. I am wearing my favorite costume. We have so much fun backstage! This is Tina and Lydia. They are ridiculously helpful backstage. I have one break, a matter of three scenes, where I have to change costumes, dry my incredibly wet hair, try to make it look decent, and get back on stage in party attire. It is a rush. Usually they both have hair dryers on my head while I am dressing. It is crazy! They are both dolls.

Here I am on Saturday morning looking forward to finishing the weekend and welcoming my sister and Kris on Thursday. I can't believe it is almost time for their visit. That means it is almost time for Daniel to be back. I am so excited!

Thanks for reading this whole thing if you did...

Love Ya'll!