Has it really been 10 years?!?!

I went home last week for my 10-year high school reunion. I can't believe it has been 10 years!!



It was fun to see a few of my favorite friends from high school. This is Holly (right) and Courtney (middle). Courtney has been my best friend since we were about 12 and Holly lived down the street from me from 5th grade on and we were dear friends as soon as we met in elementary school.
Both are awesome women today and we still keep in touch! On Saturday morning we took a tour of the high school to see all of the changes that have been made since we walked the halls. Courtney and Holly and I made sure to take pictures next to all of the grizzlies (our mascot) on the campus.

On Saturday night there was a banquet downtown in one of the nice hotels. It was a very small turn out but it was still a good time. This is Terry, a friend who has not changed ONE BIT! Neither has Kelsey! And she has a 12 week old. She was always this gorgeous...I promise...

And of course the Cravens twins. This is Jennie. Kate took the picture.

I have to say...the food left something to be desired. This is the "ribeye" steak we were served. I've never had a ribeye smothered in mushroom gravy...have you? Haha!! Hysterical.And some quality time with family was had all weekend. Here's me with my 16-year old brother, Grant. Can you believe he's 16?! He drives and everything. Sometimes I wish he was still wearing diapers.
I don't know how to describe what happened my last night home. I invited a couple of old band geek friends over for some pancakes for dinner (because that's what we did in high school) and one of them actually brought a few people I NEVER hung out with in high school. It was sort of surreal to have them in my house drinking beer with my family. After a while, they noticed we owned "rockband" on Wii and so we all played...for about 2 hours.
The two on the left are 2 guys that never hung out in my circle of friends in high school. We always knew who each other were but we just didn't socialize. I think I had a silly crush on Dustin (baseball cap) since about 3rd grade. But I'm pretty sure every girl in high school did too. Sooo silly.

So that was the trip home. I drove our car down to Arkansas with Valarie, whose parents live in Fayetteville. It was really hard to leave the Blazer. Jason had it when we met and it's been ours for years. We went on our first date in that car, fell in love in that car, moved to Ohio as newlyweds in that car, and moved to New York in that car. We have so many dear memories with it and it will be missed. :(

Now back in NYC in our new apartment, which is slowly but surely coming together, we embarked on a project: making a headboard for our bed.


HEADBOARD!! Our first headboard. And we made it ourselves!! This is the two pieces of plywood bracketed together and covered in foam and batting.
Then we found this awesome Donna Karan fabric that we got WAY on sale and covered the foam and stapled it down. Sew a few buttons on and...VOILA! In one day!


We're pretty proud of it!We should go on one of those design shows! We are a pretty great team.

We are in full baby freak out mode (looking at strollers...counting change...turning off all the lights in the house to save money...the usual) and having fun finding out what people buy for babies in NYC. More on that later...:)

Hello again from NYC! It's been awhile!
A couple of things have come up since our last post:

First- we moved!! As in last tuesday. We now live on the isle of Manhattan. "Even farther than Harlem to northern Manhattan and maintain. Get off at 181st and take the escalator..." We are now in Washington Heights on Fort Washington Ave. Our new apartment is GORGEOUS and we couldn't be happier! There's so much more space than our last apartment. We sort of don't know how to handle it. We've been here for almost a week and are still feeling so grateful and kind of decadent.

Here's a couple of views of the living room:

The bathroom. Completely new everything. No more moldy blue shower!! All of the tiling is new too!! And there's a little shelf at the back of the shower that the cats like to sit on.

This is our bedroom. We painted the walls a nice light grey (copied directly from Mrs. Juli Goss' new bedroom color).

This is the extra bedroom (much bigger than the extra bedroom at our last apartment). There are also closets in every room!! This is a HUGE thing! We had 2 closets total in our last place and neither of them was in our bedroom. There are 5 closets in this apt!

This is part of the entry hallway, viewed from the front door, standing next to the kitchen. Living room on the left, our bedroom straight ahead.

Here is the kitchen. We put all of our dishes away and found out there was EXTRA cabinet space. We can't believe it!!

And here is the entry hallway viewed standing next to the living room. That's the front door of the apartment. It leads out to the elevator. We're on the 5th floor.

Second-here is the reason for the elevator, bigger extra bedroom, and new apartment...

Yup...we're expecting our first baby!!!!!!! We found out at the end of May. I'm due Feb. 1 and we're beyond excited.

We couldn't believe it at first so we took 7 pregnancy tests. That's right...7. All were positive. Jason called Jim and had this conversation:

Jason: So how reliable are home pregnancy tests?

Jim:

Jason: STOP IT!

Jim: (louder)

Jason: (Silence)

Guess it's really happening!!

We are so thankful that this is happening to us. We also have no idea how we are going to do it. But God shows us every day that he has got us covered. We are sure this is all in His plan. We are blessed to have family supporting us from afar and friends, who have become family, supporting us closer to home. This is going to be a great ride and we would greatly appreciate your prayers.

We are signing off for now but we'll be back soon. Cyber-space needs to know every detail of our lives, after all!:)

Sam and Jason

Not dead yet.

Hello world. We are not dead yet. Still very much alive and kicking. A lot has happened since our last post in November and we'll get to that in due time. Right now we are in Arkansas visiting family that we haven't see for too long. We are having a great time and trying to relax as much as possible. No pics this time since we are away. Stay tuned and we will try to keep up better. Take care all!
Jason (and Sam)

Opening Night!!!

I opened my very first Broadway show on Sunday night. It was an experience I hope to never forget. It was sort of like a wedding day or prom. You know when the day starts so early and there never seems to be a chance to stop and relax? I got 1 free ticket for a guest and 2 party passes (obviously Jason took that one). But our friends Caroline and BJ wanted to attend so I found a way for them to purchase tickets as well (they each came with a party pass too so they were with us for the whole event). It's good to have friends with you at parties that are as big as this one was going to be.

I started my day at 6:30 in the morning, waking up to get ready for a day work call at another show ("In the Heights"). I started working there at 8:30 (just pressing and ironing clothes) and left around 11:30. I then went to my own theatre to do the exact same thing. The other 14 dressers were there with me. It was a very exciting time. We made all of our clothes look absolutely perfect for opening night from 12-4. Then I had 1 hour to go and get my hair blown out and set before I had to be back at the show to get the actors ready.

When I got back to the theatre at 5, the magic started. There were sooo many gifts everywhere. From our supervisors, from the producers, from the actors, from eachother.....it was incredible. It was like Christmas morning only broadway style. And it just kept going.

These were the gifts from our supervisors. We each got a bottle of wine (our choice-red or white) with specially designed Ragtime labels on them and all of our names listed. I never want to drink it. We also each got an apron with the logo on it. I know you're thinking 'What's so great about an apron?'. But believe me when I say that an apron is my best friend when I work backstage. It holds everything I need in an emergency quick change situation.

And this was the gift from the producers. They are glacier technology zip up snow jacket/windbreaker things. They're waterproof and 3 season appropriate. Really awesome. And they have the logo on the sleeve!!

The show started at 6:30 and it went incredibly well. When the curtain went up, the applause lasted for about 2 minutes. The actors were having a great time and so was the crew. We all proceeded to get ready in little bits at a time during our breaks while the show went on. By the end of the show, all I had to do was get dressed and organize my clutch.

When the show finished, the actors rushed back to their dressing rooms to let us help them get undressed. They all started getting dressed and we, the wardrobe crew, went ahead and got the heck out of dodge. We proceeded to the site of the party, Tavern on the Green. The party was open-bar and there were numerous bars and food tables scattered throughout the restaurant. Celebrities were everywhere. It was amazing. Of course I had to snap a picture with Mo Rocca!!

Sort of fairy-tale like....
I dress 3 girls in the womens' ensemble. This is me, Yleana, and Arlene. They are two other dressers on the crew. Yleana dresses with me in the womens' ensemble while Arlene is with the male ensemble. 2 of my favorite new people.

This is Catherine, one of my 3 ladies.

Valisia, another....

And Sumayya completes my trio.

These ladies are some of the best in the room of 11 female ensemble members and I couldn't be happier or feel more blessed to be working with them. They constantly make me laugh and I have a great time with them.

This is Bryonha. I don't dress her but I love laughing with her. She's hysterical. She has an incredible voice and sings a big solo at the end of Act 1. She'll be famous some day so I had to grab her for a picture. It was a wonderful evening. I wish I could open a show every 3 months or so. So happy.

New Job and a small catch up

I got a new job!!! I am now working on the wardrobe crew for the revival of "Ragtime" on broadway. And I've decided to try to make mondays (which will be my new day off) my blog days. I don't see why not right? We'll see how long it will last....Not much to tell yet though. I started last tuesday and we're just doing alterations and setting up the backstage spaces. The people are nice so far and we start tech rehearsals on tuesday. The first preview for an audience is October 23 and we open the show on November 15!! I'm very excited about it. There will be more to come hopefully...

Our friends Jamie and Rachel were here again this weekend and we decided to do something we've always wanted to do- take a night-time bus tour!! It was pretty awesome. We started out in times square and headed down through the financial district and we even went over the bridge to brooklyn before we headed back to times square to finish. It lasted about 2 hours and our tour guide was excruciating. We tuned her out after the first 15 minutes or so and had our own little good time in the back of the bus. It was amazing how different New York City looked from just 15 extra feet in the air. It's fun to have friends visit. It allows us to do tourist-y things we might not do on our own.

A few weeks ago, we made a trip to Boston to see Juli and Josh. They introduced us to candle pin bowling. All of the rules of regular bowling apply but the balls and pins are different. All of the bowling balls are the same size and weight. About the size of a small cantaloupe. And the pins are not shaped like bowling pins. They're like big thick candles. The game is played the same though and we had a lot of fun.

I've been running home from midtown. I'll try and get some better pictures but here's one from my iphone. This is a view from the bridge as I run across the Queensborough Bridge. Kind of cool.

At the end of the summer Jason and I went out to the Hamptons. It's one of those things that we want to be able to say we did while we lived here so we just piled in the car and drove out. We went out to the very tip of the island and saw the ocean and ate some seafood at a roadside diner. Then we bought some of our own scallops to cook at home. Delicious!!