I will blog again...

So I still want to blog about some of the cute things Max and Elese have been doing lately...(ie Elese getting potty trained...she pooped in the potty two days in a row but in her underwear today..stinker...she also intentionally peed on her bed last night just before bedtime) the only problem is that my computer keeps freezing and my outlook is acting strange. I don't have access to all my notes about what I wanted to blog about...not to mention pictures.

So this is just a random update that I will soon update my blog. I'm sitting here at work waiting on a text message to tell me what I'm supposed to fedex and then I'm going to go home so I thought this would be a good time to update my blog about updateing my blog.

Also, I think my blog is booring looking. There are so many cute blogs out there but if I understand it right, in some cases people pay someone to design them...I'm not willing to do that. Any tips on how I can get my blog looking more cutesie for Free?

Double Jerk

So my collage with Kyle, & Aaron and the Hot Box Dancers was also supposed to have this picture on it.
I was seriously so distracted while I was doing this. Grr...This is Wendy. Wendy was my source of entertainment throughout the show. She was the one that I could always strike up a conversation with. One of Wendy's talents is that she can look good in any hat...except Richards but I think he's the only one that can pull that hat off.

There are lots of other people I didn't write things about that I adore too but I didn't have pictures or time to write about all of them.

I'm a jerk

This is Bruce. I put a picture of him in my last post and didn't even tell you about him! In my defense Elese woke up from her nap and was throwing a fit mid-post so I was a little distracted. Bruce and I were in Fiddler on the roof together when I was 14 years old. Despite my friend Tonii and I being beyond Obnoxious he was still very kind to us. :) He even gave us a ride home a couple times. I thought he was such a nice guy that I wanted to date his son Andy who was my age. It was so much fun to work with him again!

You can bet that he's doin' it for some Doll.

Guys and Dolls was a blast. Honestly the best part of being in a show is getting to know people that you wouldn't necessarily get to know in another setting. I played Several different Characters. First off I was a tourist, touring New York City with my two young boys. For the record I would have been 14 when Matthew was born.Caleb: Cutest 12 year old ever. He has this little boyish smile that would make any 12 year old girl instantly fall in puppy love with him. Too bad he didn't use it for the picture. Also, his mom was the music director and his dad makes the BEST Popcorn ever! They have ruined me to microwave popcorn.

Matthew: turned 15 this month, I think. That is all I really need to say. He is a teenage boy. Full of energy and NEVER sitting still. (Son of Nicely Nicely and nephew of Rusty Charlie)

I also dated a lot of Random "Guys".

David: The Jerk took me on a date to the Hot Box and gawked at the Hot Box Dancers the entire time. In real life he is a very sweet guy that many girls had a crush on. Ladies he's single!

Brandon: Brandon was a pretty good date but he wouldn't let me dance. I called him a bore and he thought I called him a whore. After that every night on stage I would randomly call him a whore. He's my cute friend Amber's boy friend...

Richard: Likes to ZUMBA!!! I was thrilled to find a fellow Zumbaite in the cast. He also was dating one of the Hot Box dancers. Together we would try not to get hit with flying pearls. We liked to discuss the pros and cons of the X-Men Films.

Corbin: Was the first person to introduce himself to me at call backs. He's very kind and spiritual. He, like his nephew Matthew, doesn't sit still much. If you just think about getting a bottle of water he's up getting it for you before the words, "I'm thirsty" completely leave your mouth.
You can always expect a few pre-Madonas in a cast but not in this one.

Britany: Was fun to talk about her dating adventures with and was the queen of "That's what she said."

Keith: Was Mr. Nice Guy. Almost every night he would show up with food from Costco and water for everyone. I'm sure he spent a lot of $ on all of it! Plus his mom and sister past away during the run of the show and he worked double shifts coming to rehearsal during his only waking hours. He never complained about it. What a Nice Guy!

I know, I know. My blog posts have been very long and possibly boring lately so just a few more random things.

Hot Box Dancers & Joey Biltmore: The hot box Dancers were all very nice but I won't take the time to tell you about all of them and their wardrobe malfunctions. Joey Biltmore/Jon is a very cute boy and quite the dancer.

Kyle the Flasher! Kyle made my night. He played a waiter and would randomly walk up to a group of girls and lift up his apron. It was all very PG but hilarious.

Aaron the Booby Pinner. Heather/the Bag Lady (So sad I don't have a picture of her!) would always knock before coming into the dressing room so she finally made up a password. It was swordfish. During the Havanah Scene some of the girls needed to pin their bras to their dresses so they wouldn't fall down so Alyssa became the designated "Booby Pinner." Aaron eventually found out the password and would stand at the girls door and say in his deep voice "Swordfish". This caused us to changed the password to "Booby Pinner." Aaron also really likes Scrubs and would sing Guy Love to me.

I may have said this before...most of the cast got the swine flu during the run of the show so we only had about 2 performances with the entire cast. The last two nights Steve (Nicely Nicely) and Ira (Arivide) were both out with Pneumonia. Vic Groves the producer of the show and husband of our director, Michelle, stepped in for Ira and even sang his solo. Then they tracked down Brady (a guy who had played Nicely Nicely 7 years ago) to fill in for Steve. It was an adventure and I'm glad we had such great people willing to fill in.

Stupid Rain!

While the rain has helped my garden grow and minimized my allergies it has also caused me much grief. The Sugar Factory Playhouse is literally an old Sugar Factory. Back stage is outside, so when it rains not only can the audience hear it pounding on the factory but the actors have to hide out in the hot dressing rooms to avoid getting soaked. So I wasn't loving the rain but it got worse...

Because of the play I had switched my work schedule a little. While at work on June 11th I got a call from my sister-in-law Crystal. She started out asking me if it had rained at my work. It had, in fact it had gotten so bad that my boss asked me to turn off the computer for fear that it would crash. Then she proceeded to tell me that Max went downstairs for a toy and found a sopping wet carpet. Now for those of you keeping tabs on us, you may remember that last summer Max and Logan (my nephew) thought it would be fun to put the hose in our furnace vent. $1500.00 later we had new carpet and fortunately not a new furnace. Steven and I have been trying to get out of debt for a while now and we now see the light at the end of the tunnel so as you can imagine we were not thrilled about the prospect of having to buy new carpet again in the same month we had planned to pay off last years new carpet.

So...I came home and sure enough the carpet was soaked. Steven came home and together we moved furniture, used a neighbors wet/dry vac and tore up some of the carpet. Everyone kept telling me that it came in through the window but I was skeptical because the paint hadn't gotten wet but we proceeded to clean up as if that was the case. Steven returned to work and I continued to run the wet/dry vac. Once the vacuum had shocked me twice I decided to stop and blog about my frustrations. I took pictures of everything and thought it would be good therapy until I discovered that I couldn't get my photos off my camera. Grrr... But now it is working so here is a peak at what my house looked like.
I put the kids mattresses in the front room for them to sleep in and then went to rehearsal while my mom watched the kids and Steven worked late. The next morning I was pleased to find that the floor was completley dry! Hooray. After my shower I went back in to rearange some things and the floor was wet again! We called someone in to look at it and found out that it WAS coming in through the window but it wasn't running down the wall. The dirt level in the window well was too high so when it rained the water would soak in through the window. There is a crack on the window sill so the water was going through that, running down the concreate and seeping up through the carpet.

So here is how we fix it.

• dig out 2 feet of dirt in the window well and replace that dirt with gravel but don't fill it all the way to the top. (DONE as of yesturday)
• Tear up the carpet & Padding and put it out in the sun to dry. Well thanks to the rain it just sat in the garage to dry. (DONE)
  
• Cut out the damaged Dry wall (DONE) Max LOVED this part!

• Repair the Dry wall (1st coat DONE)
• Have the neighbor who installs carpet tell us if we can save our carpet (Not done, he is out of town)
• Have our neighbor reinstall our carpet and pad or buy new and have it done. (Not done)
  
• Put our house back together again. (Not done)

So now you know where we currently stand in our flood situation. Hopefully we can get the rest of it taken care of the first part of this week.

Fun with the Hales

My sister-in-law and her girls have been in town for this entire month and will be here for the rest of the summer. They've stayed a few days here with my mom but most of their time with their other Grandma and aunts. My little niece Brooklyn (Boo) is 6 and Max thinks she is SO cool! They have had a lot of fun together playing, reading (Brook knows how to read and Max is VERY impressed), slipping and sliding, and of course the had a fun sleepover at Grandmas.

Jessica and Ashley have had fun playing with the kids in the neighborhood and making up yummy treats like homemade oreo cookie and strawberry smoothies.

Steven and I enjoyed some Red Mango and Five Guys Burgers and Fries with Evan and Crystal. Even drove up the girls and then went back home for work. He flew up this week to surprise Crystal for their anniversary. It's been a lot of fun having them here for family dinners and just to hang out with.

June

Ok so things have been insane around here! I thought I would just do a quick (well as quick as it can be) post with a summary of what has gone on and then I will do a few more with more details.

So June was a disaster and here are just a few of the crazy things that have happened. Oh, and most of these things are just little dumb things but when they are piled up on top of each other it makes for very chaotic living arrangements.

• Guys and Dolls rehearsals started every night.
• Steven was working late for an extra project at work (Thanks mom for all your help)
• Mike upgraded out computer (Thanks Mike). Now while this is a good thing it is also a little frustrating. I wanted to blog about the flood (more on that later) but because of the upgrade my dumb photo program wouldn't work the way it used to. I didn't have time to mess with it so I just had wait until now to figure out how to get it working.
  
• Our toilet seat broke. Just the top part but it's still very annoying. The kids couldn't stand on it to brush their teeth so we had to bring in both of our step stools that I now trip over every time I go into the bathroom. Also, one night while getting ready for the show my make up brushes fell off the counter and into the toilet because it had no lid (it still doesn't, we need to go to Home Depot).
  
• Comcast cut our antenna. So for the last 4 years we have just been using a cable wire to aquire our TV. Blake moved in and got cable and arranged for us to get it down stairs as well. When comcast came to install it they cut the cable and lost it in the wall. Then they just said, "Maybe your brother can fix it." And left. It took 2 1/2 weeks to get someone here to fix it. Oh, and they left a big hole in our wall where they tried to thread the cable through.
  
• Then our DVD player finally gave out. So when the kids woke up in the morning wanting to watch cartoons they were SOL...and so were we. Cooking dinner, showering, doing dishes and laundry are all so much harder when you can't designate that time for that days movie/TV time.
• The kids bedroom flooded. I will do an entirely different entry on that disaster.
  
• I got the swine flu. Yep, curly tail and all. :) Fortunatly I wasn't quarintined or anything.
• My mom spent a week in Ireland. I was very happy for her, jealous in fact, but OH how I could have used her help during all the craziness.
• Steven and I had our 9 year anniversary. Because of the play this consisted of a lunch at the Olive Garden that was very yummy. Although I wasn't feeling so hot. This was the day before I started getting a fever.
  

Dispite all this we survived. I just kept telling myself (and Steven) this is just a trial. We need to just be stong and positive and show the Lord that we can handle it. Things have settled down now that they play is over and we are slowly getting the house put back together.