Odds and Ends

Daughter Mary Mae's home is on a wooded ridge in Mount Vernon. There are lots of big beautiful spruce trees with many birds and squirrels. But Sunday morning it wasn't the little critters that were visiting. First we saw this little fellow along the drive --

Then another one came along with his Mommy --

The twins went on down the road, but the Momma Deer stayed around and posed for the camera --

This is the pot of ivy in the little witch container Grandpa and I gave Granddaughter Claire following her Opening Night performance --

This bouquet is the one MM picked out for her daughter using the colors of the Slave Tituba in "Witches, the Musical."  The black feather plume is a copy of the one that Claire, as one of Satan's minions, givesave to Abigail to sign Satan's book.

 

One of Claire's friends also gave her this lovely bouquet of gladiolas --

The wind began blowing early this morning and the gusts just kept getting stronger and stronger. It was definitely bringing in a new storm system. Sure enough, in the early afternoon it started to rain. It rained very nicely for several hours.

We seem to have developed a leak around the vent in the hallway near the bathroom. The pan Forry put under it had a good two inches of water in it after the storm (that doesn't mean it rained that much as it is most likely running off a large area of the roof.). We'll have to have it checked out when we stop by Uhlmann's in Chehalis on our way south.

The parts for the tow bar for the Suzuki have finally arrived at Camping World in Liberty Lake. We've an appointment on Thursday to have the tow bar and the Air Force brake installed. Most likely we'll go up the day before and stay in their lot so that they can get an early start on the installations.

Backstage!

It was awfully quiet around here this morning. Mary Mae's whole family went to the Opening Night Cast Party after the Opening Night performance of  "Witches, the Musical," and didn't get home until very late -- or should I say early this morning?! Everyone slept in. Granddaughter Claire managed to sleep until a bit after noon!

Tonight was Daughter Mary Mae's turn to be the "behind the stage mother," helping with costumes, etc. for the actors and making sure the three young girls had their costume changes and parts ready. She asked me if I wanted to come along and help do some sewing. It sounded like an interesting way to spend an evening seeing what goes on behind the scenes.

Grandson Varick is working with the sound system. There are 22 members of the cast who are miked, which makes for a lot of batteries that need to be changed and mikes secured. Once the show is up and running, his main task is to listen for a call to come and assist someone who is having troubles.

He watches the show on the downstairs television monitor, alert for what's going on with the sound. That's his sister Claire in the background, waiting for her next turn on stage.

Mary Mae and I were pretty busy before the show started, mainly getting aprons and cuffs for the Puritan girls fixed and adjusted. I sewed the buttonholes smaller on one girl's dress as he buttons kept popping open as she danced...

After the show started, the task was to watch what was happening and being prepared to deal with wardrobe malfunctions between scenes...

Claire's other role in the production is to be one of Satan's minions in the two dream sequences. The other two girls play a cat and a dog while Claire is a bird. Here she is in make-up --

As soon as the two dream sequences are over, she'll have to quickly come back down to make-up to get this set-up removed and her Pilgrim girl look re-done.

Quite the costume!

In the "green room" downstairs waiting to go on again --

After Claire had changed into her bird costume, I called Forry to come down to the Lincoln Theater and get me. I had done my part and enjoyed being backstage, but the show was only half over. It was getting to be too many late nights for this old lady!

They will have four more shows next weekend, starting on Thursday night, one of them a Sunday matinee. They have a special show on Halloween, then the last two shows will be November 2nd and 3rd.

Opening Night!

Tonight was the BIG night -- the World Premiere of "Witches the Musical!"

I was sure glad we had been able to sit in on the dress rehearsal yesterday, it's such a complex play that I saw many things tonight that I had completely missed yesterday.

These are the three little Puritan girls in the play. Our granddaughter Claire is on the right. The girl on the left plays her sister and the one in the middle is the beggar, Sarah's child.

I had not yet seen any of the plays Claire has been in this past year and I was greatly impressed about the awesome job she is doing!

After getting home late last night from the dress rehearsal, we all slept in this morning. Too tired to worry about cooking, we all went over to a Shari's for brunch. Daughter Mary Mae and I dropped everyone else off at the house for some rest while we went to a local florist shop. I found an ivy plant and a little witch holder as a gift for Claire while her mother put together a spray of flowers for her (performance tradition, you know!).

We made it back to the house with only about an hour to spare before Claire and Varick (who works with the sound crew) and Scott (who is working behind the scenes changing the sets) had to leave for the theater. MM left a few minutes later. Forry and I lazed around a bit before we headed to the theater as well. They were serving glasses of champagne to the attendees, who had to enter via the red carpet at the entrance.

Quite a night -- and quite a change from our usual routine...!

Over the Mountains

We drove over the Cascade Mountains to Mount Vernon today. There is a great deal of construction on Snoqualamie Pass and they have been warning about the fact that there is only one lane of road open each way -- long delays are to be expected. So we decided we would take Highway 2 over Stevens Pass instead. We came home the last time we were on the coast over the North Cascades Highway which is a gorgeous drive, but long. We hadn't been on Stevens for several years. It's a slower drive because much of it is only two lane highway and it also goes through many small towns with 25 mile per hour speed limits.

It was still a bit cloudy and hazy from all of the summer fires, but the colors of the trees were beautiful. We probably caught them at their height as many of them were just beginning to drop their leaves...

This is Palisades State Park on the other side of Wenatchee. It's where all of the rock climbers come to play and test themselves and their gear. As today was a week day, we didn't see any climbers, but in the past we've seen large parties of them on the rocks.

The reds, oranges and yellows of the orchards are in sharp contrast to the dry hills above them --

As we got further into the mountains, the colored undergrowth showed quite brightly against the evergreen trees --

Even on the steep rocky hillsides, the brilliant yellows stood out --

 

And yes, that's fresh snow over there on that mountainside!

It was raining when I snapped this picture. It's fascinating to see the colors of the scrub brush on otherwise barren rocky walls...

By the time we got to Mount Vernon, it was already dark and raining very hard. I had been talking to Daughter Mary Mae on our cell phones and found out that they were all over at the Lincoln Theater for tonight's dress rehearsal of "Witches, the Musical." It was an open rehearsal, so we grabbed a quick sandwich and drove to the theater to watch. This is a World Premiere of an original screen play about the Salem Witch Trials. There are over thirty people in the cast -- including our Granddaughter Claire who is one of the three little girls in the play.

What a treat to get to see this preview of the Opening Night we'll see tomorrow. It's a long play and it was after eleven when it was finished! I was very impressed by Claire. Her part involves singing and dancing -- and she's on stage most of the time.She plays a little Puritan girl and is also seen as one of Satan's minions in a dream sequence.

Grandson Varick is working with the sound crew while Scott is working backstage changing scenery and MM is helping with costumes. Quite a family production!