Peter and the Star Catcher and More!

 

How fun, I just got back from three days, five plays, three pre-play discussions,  a backstage tour and a actor's seminar.

 My book club,  (all of us shown above at dinner)  the Waldon Ladies Book Club, attends the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, about three hours south of us, every year.

To the left is one of our guides on our back stage tour, a first for us ... and we learned all kinds of fun things, like that it can take 80 hours to hand tie a wig ... (Human hairs are tired into a fine netting.)  Such a wig costs the Festival $2500 ... whoa.

Here are some of us at the an actor's seminar.   An actor talks about how he came to be in the business, then tells insider tales of the Festival and other work he/she has done.  These are held in 'the pine grove' ... near the green shows stage, an outdoor stage that features dancing, singing, and comic antics every evening, for which there is no charge.

 We all loved the plays we saw this year, including two Shakespearean plays, The Tempest, we saw in the outdoor replica 'Globe' theater. We also saw Anything Goes by Cole Porter ... which was very fun. In addition to the Festival plays we attended Thoroughly Modern Milly at the Tuacahn Theater in St. George, another hour south ... then last of all we watched Peter and the Star Catcher, just off Broadway.  This is the book we had all read for August, and which we all enjoyed.  It is written by Dave Barry, and a cohort, so of course it is very funny.  It is the prequel to James Barrie's Peter Pan, and explains how 'Neverland' as we have all come to know and love it, came to be.

I admit I liked the book better than the play.  The book is fun and funny and sometimes touching ... the play borders on silly and, well, more silly. 

... and after all the fun, it was time to return home to my own Peter Pan, who resides in my bedroom.  It is a four foot tall painting that was done by an artist for a magazine cover.  I found it at an estate sale years ago and fell in love.   I have always wondered what magazine cover it graced ... but will probably never know.

Tour of Utah Bike Race and Me!

The wonderful old lime stone house in Hoytsville was owned by the grandparents of my childhood neighbors.  Its the house that made me fall in love with antiques and old houses, when I was nine!

 Last weekend, Mr. P. and I ran up to Hoytsville to check out the goodies at the occasional Vintage Market there.  I had missed shopping it the day before, and thought he might enjoy the trip into the mountains, for the second day of the sale.

Except, as it turned out, the sale was just Friday.  Opps  ... but the owner lives next door and happened to be at 'the old milk barn' ... so she let me browse, how nice is she?

We had noticed, on driving into town, that the main road was lined on both sides with vans painted with notices of bikers from foreign counties, and we realized we had happened onto the Tour of Utah bike race... they had come through Payson on Wednesday when I was at work, sadly, so it was serendipitous that we happened by when we did.

Sure enough on our way back through town, the police closed the road, so we walked along the route, and got to see some of the best bikers in the world ride by!

 It was so fun to smile and wave at the locals who had come to cheer on the cyclists.  Everyone loved it ...

OK, maybe not everyone, I noticed a few kids who seemed bored.  

A Smash Book for a Sick Girl

 We have just passed an eventful weekend ... My 6 year old granddaughter, sometimes called Birdy, is sick.  On Friday she woke up with a bad stomach ache, her Dad took her to Instacare, then later in the day to her pediatrician, who sent her to the emergency room of the local hospital and there they sent her to Primary Children's Hospital, the premiere Children's Hospital in 6 states.  If you have followed my blog, you know this is the hospital for which our family is involved in fund raisers twice a year.  Well, I am afraid its our turn to find out about the wonderful facility first hand.

 Here is our girl not long after she arrived, and before the meds helped her pain and her temperature. 

Knowing she would be there for a few days, I thought it would be fun to do a smash book for her to embellish.

 I found a picture of the hospital on line, to add to the book.

 I also found a couple of pictures for her to color on Graphics Fairy.  I left room for some of her own art work.

 I also included markers for her drawings, and some stickers to place where she sees fit in her book.

You can see that she was pretty happy by the time we left the hospital at 3:00 A.M., on Saturday night.

 

Now we are all feeling better too, what the doctors saw on her liver at the first hospital, is  now thought to be an infection.  The doctors have been giving her super antibiotics, and will do more scans today.