I am confidant Casa Manana couldn't have put on a finer production of
"Beauty and the Beast".  It was simply stellar.  I certainly knew
LouAnn Stumbo has a terrific voice, but she surpassed herself.  Videos
were forbidden, but since Dr. Kitchens said, prior to the start of the
show, that the cast would appreciate it if we wouldn't use flash
photography, I inferred from that that non-flash photography was permissible. 

Took roughly 200 photos. 

Of course, a whole lot of 'em didn't turn out worth a flip, since I
couldn't use the flash and I've no idea how to use the manual
settings.  Still, some of them were okay:

The above's just a quick zip-thru the performance.  Afterwards, the children were provided autograph folders and they were encouraged to solicit autographs from the cast members.  Oh my!  All three girls got into it with enthusiasm:

I snagged one of the cast members for the obligatory poppet picture:

We had a super time.  It was a little sticky when  all three declared during the short intermission that they needed to visit the facilities, seeing as how that was the destination of virtually every female in the building.  IOW, the lines were daunting, to say the least.  Finally it dawned on me that I live a few blocks away so we hurried out to the van, drove home, scurried to the bathrooms, piled back into the van, returned to the church and sneaked into our saved seats just a minute or two after the performance started up.

Dr. Kitchens presented a succinct, yet earnest, gospel presentation at the end (well, it is a church putting on the musical, after all!) and I'm praying the LORD is pleased to use it to draw some people to Him.  May it be so!

It was a lovely afternoon and a fabulous performance, clearly displaying the year's worth of work that went into it.

Don't you know the various performers are going to feel at loose ends for awhile?  It's always difficult when one has concentrated upon an event for such a long time, and it suddenly comes to an end.  

It's to be hoped they'll start work on another musical for next fall.  Heaven knows this one was a resounding success!

They're performing the Broadway version of "Beauty and the Beast", regarding it as a community outreach.  For the past few weeks the congregation's been urged to plan to come on opening night - tonight - as it'd be nice for the performers to have a decent-sized audience.

Clearly there was some anxiety about "If we perform it, will they come?"

Um, not to worry....

It might be Thursday evening but the place is packed solid, from the looks of it.  All parking lots are full or close to, cars on the surrounding neighborhood streets, plus cars being parked across Montgomery St., forcing people to run for their lives across that busy street, seeing as how there's no crossing guard. 

I'm taking Bethany, Brianna, Meredith and Margaret to Saturday afternoon's performance.  Something tells me we need to plan to get there early. 

Is That All There Is?

A snippet:

Jack's blog is New Covenant Living, over there in the links section.  Anne sez check it out. 

This morning I drove up to Kirstin's church in Keller to fetch Bryson and take him for a few hours while she attended a series of meetings. Figured it'd be nice for him to be able to play with his cousin (their grandmothers are sisters....what type of cousin are they, exactly?) Cole, so headed back south to Arlington. Jeanne - who keeps him four days a week while his parents work - had an appointment in Dallas, so I watched the pair of goony birds cleverly disguised as two- and three-year-old boys.

Aren't they cute?

Of course, at their age they mostly play along-side each other, as opposed to truly playing with each other, but if we keep bringing them together I'm confident they'll get the hang of it. They definitely found one activity upon which they agreed:

Eventually it was time for us to get back in the van and return to the church, so Kirstin could have him back. It wasn't long before this is what I saw in the rear-view mirror, and snapped a photo at a stop light:

Obviously she recalled my post ages ago about the various - and pricey - Hello Kitty merchandise that's available.

From somewhere in Asia comes this:

It's a wedding dress. 

I wonder if we can find an Hello Kitty engagement ring? 

Heaven knows other writers - published ones, to boot - do so, and without having much of anything happen. I've been slowly reading a genre romance (hey, I've been running a fever and been lethargic...lemme alone) and it dawned on me that the book was half over and nothing had happened.  Nothing.  So far the entire story, if "story" it can be called, has been about the feelings of the protagonists. 

In a Betty Neels book at least stuff happens to move the story along....the main character gets fired, maybe, or is hired to watch over a difficult case, or someone dies, thus changing her circumstances, etc.  Granted, there's a deal of coffee drinking that goes on (someone arrives?  coffee!  someone is leaving?  coffee!  someone arrives and is ready to go to bed?  coffee!) but still, various events occur which act to move the story along. 

Not in this book.  There's been no change of circumstance apart from the one at the very beginning, when the once-married couple find themselves face to face again. 

This woman's managed to write thousands of words without taking the trouble to devise a plot, so why the heck can't I? 

...here are a couple Elaine sent me when they were in Orlando last week visiting "Mickey Mouse House", as Charles called it when we were there when he was three years old:

I'm not sure exactly where this was taken.  Frontierland, maybe?  And here's darling Margaret outshining the DisneyWorld Belle:

Truth be told, doesn't that "Belle" look a trifle long in the tooth for that particular character?

First up, of course, is one of Cole in the bounce house.  Second is one of the girls jumping:

For those interested, there are a couple more in the "video" section of my blog. 

It was held at the Bouncin' Bonanza, and the kids had a super time:

I took Margaret and Meredith, as I was going anyway and Elaine really needed to study her Greek for her NT Greek class, and here they were, sliding down one of the many jumpables provided.  There was also a round, jumping thing that was quite popular:

That's Brianna us there, with the M's to the right.  Naturally there was also an actual bounce house, where Cole could be found:

Ha!  Caught 'im mid-jump.  After an hour and a half of jumping and sliding like crazed things, it was time for cupcakes:

Cole was encouraged to blow out the candles with a blaring of horns:

Here's the birthday boy chowing down on one of the aforementioned cupcakes:

Hard to believe our little guy's already TWO years old.