A Christmas Carol

We discovered a great little theater this weekend.  The Glendale Centre Theater is a theater-in-the-round, meaning that the stage is in the center of the room, and the audience literally sits all the way around.  There are two "tunnels" like in sports arenas that they use for moving props and people around.  There are NO bad seats.  It is relatively small, and can hold maybe 200 people or so.  Contrast this with something like the Pantages theater in Hollywood that can hold 200+ in just the balcony, and you can see the difference.

This weekend, they started their annual production of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."  It was fabulous!  Even with the small cast of only about twenty members, including a 3-year-old, the quality was great.  All the singing was a cappella, which they used as segue between several of the scenes.  Several members were simply part of a group of carolers, which sang several traditional carols.  With such a limiting stage, the show could have been rather drab, but they maximized the space by incorporating the stairwells as staging for the carolers or the three narrators.  All in all, it was an extremely impressive show.

The real joy for us, though, was watching the boys, especially Levi.  We were seated right by one of the tunnels, and the show began with the singers coming out to greet the audience personally.  We had three different cast members speak with the boys, one of them for quite a while.  Levi was absolutely loving it.  Then, when the show finally started, he was bopping up and down in his chair to the music.  His favorite character was Scrooge, "Because he turned nice."  He wasn't too fond of Jacob Marley, though, and kept asking if that was a ghost or an actor. 

We've known for a long time that he loves performing.  His body language and word choices scream "Entertainer!"  He, however, wasn't really able to distinguish acting from real life, until yesterday.  He kept asking where the screen was, and referred to the show as the "movie."  But, he finally realized what acting is and what it means to play a character.  This theater hosts an acting camp in the summers, and I think we'll send him once he's old enough.

This was a great way to open the Christmas season, and I think we might have to go every year.

Jon, this is for you!

A picture of Levi.

Yes, that title does say "The Odyssey of Homer."  He's just getting a head start.

Picture of the day...smashed ball

Our favorite picture of the season.  Look at the deformity on the ball!  They use a semi-soft ball, somewhere between a teeball and an official baseball.  Granted, he's not actually looking at the ball when he hit it, but it still went pretty far.  Sadly, the really good first baseman managed to catch it heading onto the outfield grass, but A.J. hit it really well.  Look at the form in his body, too.  It's perfect!  You can draw a line from his foot through his hip to his shoulder, just like it should be.

AJ Pitching

Here's an animated GIF of AJ from a couple weeks ago. Just trying out a few tricks with the camera. We've got 350 pictures in just the last 2 weeks to try and sort out.

Vacation next year...and walking there

Next year the Al and Joy Pabst Family will be vacationing...together...at a house on Tybee Island, just off the Georgia coast near Savanna. We decided to help us all get in better shape, that we would walk there. No, not for the actual vacation, but collectively walk the distance from our house (since we live the farthest away) to Tybee. That's a distance of 2438 miles. So far, we've gone about 37.

I set up a googledoc spreadsheet to help us keep track of our progress. The link is http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoMNJc5xw5DYdHZvY1FscWQwOFFMblRHZEwxWWE4dGc&hl=en and everyone can view it. Some of you I've invited to also have access to edit it, so that you can enter your own data. I figure that from here on, if each adult walks 7.8 miles per week, we can get there. Kids count, too, so all the times A.J. walks to school will be included. Let's go, Pabsts!
Inspiration Photo of Tybee--