top ten of 2012

So, it's been awhile. I blame it on the holidays ... which were a blast.

At the end of every year, my family makes a list of our Top Ten stories. And since I've been married, I've done with with my husband. So my first post of this year is...

THE TOP TEN OF 2012

Number 10. My husband and I have been married now for three and a half years. We celebrated three years in June. And to celebrate we went to a fun park in Ogden. We played mini golf, arcade games, hit the batting cages, and rode the go-karts. Then we drove around and found a pasta restaurant for dinner. We were the only ones there and ate great, unique food. It was a fun anniversary.

Number 9. With my husband majoring in Theatre Education, he needed some experience teaching theatre. So while he was working for the Opera this summer, he had the opportunity to be a part of Broadway Bound, which is a week long class for kids. This lead him to be a teacher for the Opera's Conservatory for children. Last semester he taught his first class called Creative Drama. He has a really fun class and enjoyed teaching theatre to children. He's going to continue teaching at the Conservatory this semester.

Number 8. My husband turned the big 2-6 this past year and has never had a surprise birthday party. So I decided this was the year to do that. I planned a bowling party for him and invited all our family and friends to be there. That morning, I took him to breakfast and drove him around blindfolded. He has no idea what was going on and was surprised when we arrived at the bowling alley with everyone there. It was a great party complete with a Spiderman ice cream cake, which he wanted. 

Number 7. Aggie Football! My husband and I had to be the biggest fans of Aggie Football this season ... or at least we thought we were. We went to every home game and watched every away game. We would drive up from Salt Lake just to go to a game. We were even on the field when Coach Andersen was handed the WAC Champions trophy and accepted the invitation to play in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. We watched them win the bowl game and finish off a perfect season. Go Aggies!

Number 6. Like I mentioned earlier and last year, my husband worked for the Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre company this summer. This is was huge step forward for his career. He was working and being paid as a professional actor. He gained a lot of experience and connections. He also enjoyed being deeply involved with theatre. We're excited that he gets the opportunity to perform with them again this summer.

Number 5. This past summer was an Edwards Family Reunion to Moab, which my husband sadly missed out on. My favorite part of the trip was hiking to Delicate Arch. There's two different ways to see it. The lower route is a simple walk that looks up to the arch but it looks so small and slightly disappointing from this location. The other way is a 45 minute hike. But this is the way to see the arch. You're walking along this ridge, then turn the corner, and BAM ... there's the arch! And it's amazing! I promised myself and my husband that I would take him there to see it, because it's truly breath taking. (We're standing in front of it in the bottom right corner, just to give you some perspective.) 

Number 4. My husband has been performing at USU for almost four years now and has done a number of different shows. And sadly last semester was his last show ... Legally Blonde: The Musical. He was the leading male, Emmett Forest. What a way to end his career with USU! He was amazing and the part was perfect for him. Everyone who saw the show raved about his performance. It was a great last show and we're excited to see what grad school has in store for him.

Number 3. My husband and I haven't been on a vacation, just the two of us, since our honeymoon. So after he was done with the Opera last summer, we took a two week vacation. I planned almost every detail of this vacation and tried to squeeze in as much as possible. We went to a Bee's game, spent a day at Education Week, went camping for a night, relaxed in St. George, stayed at a bed 'n' breakfast, saw Les Mies and Wicked, and much much more. It was great time!

Number 2. So we've lived in Logan for over three years now and for most of that time the walls of our apartment have been white. I've always wanted to paint our apartment and in May, I finally got the courage to ask our landlady if we could ... and she said yes! So we did! We did most of it around Memorial Day and finished up on Labor Day. And it's been a huge improvement. I love our little home here.

And number 1. Auzi and King Louie. Our cars. We sadly watched King Louie hit rock bottom in 2012. He's been a good car but we didn't feel it was worth it to fix the damage. So we quickly looked for another car and quickly found the perfect one for us ... Auzi. And he's been a good little car. Complete with an Aggie license plate holder and Aggie sticker on the back windshield. :)

2012 was a good year for us. What's your Top Ten?

i've won the war

I did it. I finally mastered the chocolate chip cookie.

How? you ask. What's the secret? you say. Well, I'll tell you:

Refrigeration

Let me explain. The chocolate chip cookie has always been my arch nemesis of the dessert world. I'm a pretty darn good baker but when it came to the chocolate chip cookie, I could never seem to get it just right.

Growing up, we always had cookies of some kind in the house ... snicker doodles to gumdrop cookies and everything in between. I grew up helping my mom bake them and eventually it become my Saturday chore to make cookies. I learned to love making cookies, but I still struggled with my arch nemesis.

I remember one day my mom came home with a new recipe to try. She insisted that this was the recipe to solve the madness. So I gave it a shot. And guess what? They turned out perfect ... great tasting, nice and round, soft. We thought that was it, that life would be blissful with a perfect chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk. And for awhile it was, till I tried the recipe again ...

Failure. Pure and utter failure. To my amazement, the recipe never worked for me again.

When I got to college I discovered the best tasting chocolate chip cookie recipe. It's on the back of the Western Family brand of chips. I said to myself, "Self, why not try this recipe out?" They are delicious! But, they always turn out flat. I think after years and years of fighting with the chocolate chip cookie, I finally settled for a delicious tasting cookie regardless of how it comes out of the oven.

A few weeks ago I was craving cookie dough. So instead of making some, I picked up some pre-made Western Family chocolate chip cookie dough at the store. It was delicious, of course, but deciding against making myself sick on raw dough, I baked some cookies as well. I assumed the dough was made from the same recipe Western Family promotes on the back of the chip bags. But when I took the cookies out of the oven, they were perfect. Golden brown, round, soft for days, and delicious.

So I started to wonder what the difference was between my pathetic cookies and these brilliant ones. The big obvious answer was that this store bought dough was hard from being in the fridge. When I rolled the dough into balls, they stayed tight. And the dough was cold so when placed in the oven, it took longer for the dough to fan out. I concluded that the next time I made chocolate chip cookie dough, I would put the dough in the refrigerator and see if this would put a stop to my rivalry.

My husband loves chocolate chip cookies so it wasn't long until I made some dough again. But this time, the dough went in the fridge over night. The next day I baked two dozen and to my wonderful pleasure ... they came out golden brown, round, and soft for days! And of course, absolutely delicious, especially warm right out of the oven. The perfect chocolate chip cookie!

The battle is over; the war is won. I have mastered the chocolate chip cookie. Who know all it took was a little chill.

costumes galore

Most theatre departments and companies have what you call costume storage. And most of these costume storage spaces are full of costumes. Go figure. However, I think you would be surprised by just how many costumes there actually are. At least I was when I saw Utah State's costume storage. I guess I would have to describe most costume shop people as ... pack rats ... They save everything because they never know when they are going to need it again.

Last year Utah State got a new costume shop adviser. I think she has the same response as me when she saw the costume storage ... because seriously, there are a lot of costumes. This year, she approached my husband about having a costume sale to get rid of the excess of costumes. They would split the profits with TSA if they helped out. They agreed and the sale was on.

When I first heard about the idea, I thought it was great but I didn't think it would be a huge success. But with Halloween right around the corner, maybe it would strike up some interest. TSA was in charge of promotion so they posted fliers around campus and around town. The costume crew spent hours getting ready. The night before, several students helped pack the dance studio full of ... stuff - clothing, purses, hats, shoes, and other random items.

The sale was last Saturday for six hours. We arrived in the morning and looked around. I was surprised by how much cool stuff there was. Everyone around me were trying hats on and getting excited over period clothing. I immediately found a hat that I fell in love with.

The longer we stayed, the more people showed up. It was great to see people interested. My husband and I search through everything. It felt like an awesome yard sale, except it had items from the last few decades ... and everything was ten dollars or less. We found a few great items but sadly didn't have enough money to pay for it all. So we put it aside and left to grab some more dough. When we came back later that afternoon to pay and help clean up, so much was missing! The costume shop adviser said they had a steady stream of people all afternoon ... and that sometimes it got so packed that you could barely move around. She had also dropped the price of everything to twenty cents. Twenty cents! My husband and I found a few more things to buy at that price.

Overall, it was a huge success! The department sold over 80 percent of the items and made some room for more costumes in the future. The costume shop adviser wants to do this again in the Spring. If she does, you won't want to miss it.

always an aggie

Here at Utah State it's Homecoming week, filled with traditions, and football, and excitement ... and street painting.

Aggie Bull-evard goes right through the middle of campus and each year it gets painted by the different clubs and organizations. Every club gets a 10x10 space to paint their logo and/or incorporate the Homecoming theme - which this year is "Celebrate! Once an Aggie, always an Aggie." The street painting is a contest so there's only a two hour time limit to paint. The winners are for best overall, best incorporated theme, best artistic, and best greek.

My husband reserved a spot for the Theatre Student Association and was in charge of the design. He spent a good amount of time on it last week. After bouncing ideas off of me and other students, he finalized his idea. So Saturday, we were out and about buying supplies. We stopped at Home Depot for paint and such and Wal-Mart for cardboard. My husband decided to make a cut-out of the design beforehand to save on time ... which ended up working really well ... except for it filled up our entire living room and lasted most of our Saturday.

Once we had the cardboard laid out, my husband measured and traced and cut. And I helped, of course. We spent quite few hours on it. To make the time pass, we watched the Utah State v. Colorado State football game ... which they won ... go Aggies!

The painting was going on Monday night. Also going on Monday night was Legally Blonde rehearsal, which takes a good hand full of the departments students. My husband tried to recruit people to come help paint via emails and texts, but no real commitment came from it ... except for mine. It was just going to be me and the street. I was nervous to take on the challenge, I'll admit. We got there just before 6pm to get settled in. And to my great surprise, a theatre student showed up. She is in Legally Blonde but said she'd help for ten minutes or so before rehearsal. So it was the three of us tracing the design in chalk on the street.

Once rehearsal time came along, our friend left. My husband called the director and asked if he could stay since I was the only one there. Thankfully, the director let him stay for an extra hour. Huge relief off of my shoulders. As we were painting, we found that we had to use lots of paint to fill the gaps, and paint does not dry quickly on the street when there's clumps of it. But it started looking really cool. People would pass by and say, "Oh, I get it. Theatre masks in the 'U'. That's cool."

Shortly after we started painting, we had two more students show up to help us. Awesome! It made the job go much more quickly. The four of us had some difficulty painting on top of wet paint, which we had to do because of the time limit, but we got the job done. It was a lot of fun.

The design is a clock with an 'A' in place of the numbers. It represents always being an Aggie. The finished product turned out great and we were pretty proud of it. Sadly, we didn't win anything.

Overall, the street painting was stressful and fun ... two things my husband and I seem to be pretty skillful at. :)

a hidden talent

Guess what everyone? I've written a play. A full, over an hour, one act play.

My husband's theatre-ness is finally rubbing off on me.

This wasn't out of the blue ... well, kind of. The Theatre Student Association (TSA) has a Halloween show every year as a fundraiser for the club. In the past they have done skits or student written shows with a Halloween theme. My husband, who's the president of the club, came home one night last week and was telling me that no one had shown interest in doing the show yet.

The next day, I was bored. So I put my fingers to the keyboard and started typing. All I knew was that it had to be a murder mystery of sorts and include dancing pumpkins, (it's a tradition thing.) And from there I couldn't stop. My mind just kept turning. After about two hours or so, I had seven characters, a location, a basic plot, and sixteen pages of script.

The next day ... fourteen more pages. I was so excited and hyped up that I just kept working on it. I would show pieces of it to my husband and he would get excited too. We would talk about the plot as it got more and more complicated. I would spend hours writing and re-writing as my husband was at rehearsal. I had another student look at it and give me pointers. I told my family about it and they all thought it was an interesting idea. I even had to cut a character out because my plot was getting too complicated. I kept working and typing and after about six days I had a finished play.

Before I finished it though, I had to submit it to TSA for consideration. And when I submitted it, I was the only play that had been submitted. But then I found out that a comedy group had asked TSA if they could perform for the Halloween show with a series of skits. And then the next day, another murder mystery show had been submitted that was shorter than mine and completed. I had competition.

My husband called me one night from rehearsal and said that the verdict was in ... the TSA presidency was going with both of the other shows. Even though I was a little heartbroken, I could understand why. The other shows were cheaper to produce, thus giving them more profit. Plus, the other shows would be easier to do in such a short amount of time. But still, it was hard to motivate myself to finish the show after that because I had written it specifically for Halloween. But I did; I finished it, and I am now in the process of perfecting it.

I'm going to resubmit my play in the spring and hopefully see it come to life on stage. In the meantime, I'm going to try my hand at writing another play, one without so many limits.

Who knows? Maybe I have a hidden theatre talent.

rehearsal schedule drama

Wonderful news everyone! My husband was cast as Emmett Forest in Legally Blonde the Musical!

Thank you, thank you.....yes, we are both extremely excited! We sang to the songs all the way to St. George and back in preparation for the audition. Not only was this the part he wanted, but it will be a good challenge for him. And as this is his last year at Utah State, this will also be his last performance for the school's main stage shows. What a great part to end on!

But wait....there's more news. There have been some changes made to the rehearsal schedule. My husband will now be rehearsing three and a half hours a day instead of three and six days a week instead of five.....Yea!

I hope at this point you are sensing the sarcasm in that last bit, because it really doesn't make me jump for joy. So they need the extra practice time. No big deal right? It'll all be over in two and a half months. I can handle that....I think.

I don't mean to make this a sob story but I just wanted to share some things that I go through as a theatre wife. I grew up in a home where we always sat down as a family to eat dinner. It was important to my parents and became important to me. So I struggle with the idea that my husband isn't home for dinner. Eat earlier, you say? Well we would if I wasn't working and he didn't have other responsibilities. Before rehearsals ended at 10pm, we would eat dinner when he got home around 9:30pm. Not too bad I guess. But eat dinner after 10pm? Crazy I say! My husband told me that he would not be offended if I ate dinner without him. Sad thought! Who wants to eat a lovely cooked meal all by themselves six nights a week? Not me.

And what happened to the deal that the theatre department has him during the week and I get him on the weekends? Who broke that deal, huh? I sure didn't. The weekends were for me and him to regroup and spend some quality time together. But no, you decided to take a part of my weekends away too. And what about our family that lives an hour and a half away that we usually drive down to see once a month? What about them? They won't be seeing him any time soon.

But it's only for two and a half months. It'll go by quickly. And for that time, I'll put on a happy face and be supportive. We'll have late night dinners and make the most of our weekends. Honestly, I am excited for him and I am willing to support him in this. It just stinks knowing that he's gone just a little bit longer and a little bit more than usual. However, it'll all be worth it when I see him up on that stage, acting and singing his heart out. He is great to watch on stage! Until he kisses the girl....

But for another time, another blog.

Oh the life of a theatre wife. :)

s'more-less

My husband and I decided to have one last vacation before school started. One of the many adventures of our two week vacation was to camp for a night in Zion's National Park. We were staying with my husband's grandparents for the week but took one night to camp in the great out doors.

We got to our site kinda late and decided to make s'mores and call it a night. But as we were setting up, my husband called out, "Honey, where are the marshmallows?" Pretty sure I had seen them as I was packing, I claimed that they were in our bag. However, as we continued to search all our stuff, no marshmallows turned up. So it was either stay put s'more-less or head back to the house to get them.

Seriously, who ever wants to be s'more-less?

We didn't bring our car into the park so we had to brainstorm on how to get back to his grandparents. I knew there was a shuttle that went into town that passed by his grandparent's house. We headed over to the Visitor's Center in hopes that it wasn't too late to catch one. We got to a shuttle station and asked the driver if he went into town. He kindly redirected us to the other shuttle station....the one that went into town and not up the canyon. So as it was getting darker, we headed to the other station.

Once we got to the station, we waited for the next available shuttle with a few other folks. It arrived and we asked how late the shuttles ran and if we would be able to get back into the park. The shuttle driver assured us that we would be fine....if we hurried. Determined to get our s'mores, we climbed aboard and enjoyed our ride through town.

The shuttle arrived at it's farthest destination. We described the house to the driver only to hear the words, "Oh the West's!" She not only knew them, but was kind enough to drop us off in front of their driveway. We thanked her and ran inside. And of course, once we were inside, there were the marshmallows, sitting on the bed, where I had left them, as I was packing.

Relieved to find them, we grabbed the marshmallows, headed out the door, and giggled all the way back to the shuttle stop where we waited patiently with a bat for the shuttle to pick us up....It almost missed us. The street light decided to go out leaving us in darkness. Thankfully we were seen last minute. We hopped on and enjoyed the ride back into the park.

Walking back to our campsite, we talked of yummy s'mores and how this tiny, fun adventure would all be worth it. We weren't allowed to have fires so we were using our camper stove to roast our 'mallows. We started setting up our camper stove and the ingredients. It was only then that I heard the devastating words:

"Honey, where is the propane tank?"

I gave up. Even though I searched the tent for at least five minutes, I just knew it was back at the house, sitting on the bed, where I had left it, as I was packing. I felt like I had failed; we were going to be s'more-less. And the shuttles would be done in less than a half hour....not enough time to run back again. My husband did the best he could to cheer me up with words but nothing worked. Finally, he sat me down, put a marshmallow on a stick, lit a match on his zipper (which I didn't even know was possible), and toasted it. Catching on and smiling a little, I pulled out the grahams and chocolate. We each had one and enjoyed our s'mores under the starlit night.

S'more-less no more.