Happy Birthday Chaz!

Chaz turned 17 on Monday. We had a family party and ate Chaz's favorites, burritos and brownies. Afterward we played some games.







4th of July: Adventure and Blood

As is our tradition we headed up to my parents small town for 4th of July. They have one of those wonderful small town parades that goes one way, and then turns around and passes you going the other way.

We were a little too late to make it on the family float this year, but my mom & dad and 90 year old aunt and my sisters and their families were all on it.

After the parade, a local crop duster drops candy in parachutes over the park and baseball field for all the children. During the drop, Chaz saw that Ruth and Jared weren't catching any candy, so he decided to run out and get them some. He ran through a gate, that unbeknownst to him, had a wire stretched taught across the top (we assume to keep cows out of the field). The wire caught him right across the nose and eye and sent him flying.

When he got back to us blood was streaming down his face and we caused quite a stir in the little town as we took him to the bathrooms to get a towel and clean him up. My cousin came towing a man saying, "I've got a doctor!" A nice bone surgeon who happened to be at the park that day took a look at Chaz. He pried apart his eye to see if the eye had been punctured or damaged. After a good look, he said that "if it were his boy" he would just take him home and bandage him up. The cut across his nose just took a chunk out, and there was nothing to stitch, the cuts across his eyelid, and the edge of his eye were in such a tender place that stitches may do more harm then good. So we took Chaz back to grandmas and bandaged him up and gave him an ice pack. He had a bad headache and his eye did swell.

The good news is that his eye turned out not to be nearly as bad as we first expected. It took a couple of days for the swelling to go down, and he had a little purple ring around his eye, and a dime sized scab across his nose. Good thing scars are manly.

In retrospect Chaz was very lucky that the wire wasn't barbed, he has good eye sockets (it's cool that your bone structure can protect your soft tissues like that), and we had a doctor on site to assuage our concerns.

On the way home from grandma's Ruth was eating some of her parade candy when she felt a crunch. You got it, Ruth lost a tooth. So our 4th was a day of adventure and blood.

Hello, Dolly!

The last couple of weeks Hello, Dolly has totally taken over my life. I designed the scene changes (6 typed pages worth) and painted all the details on one side of our 17 foot rotating platform. We've had some rough practices and it's been a real challenge. Last night was much better, and I was able to remain cheerful for most of the night. It is coming together, and I think it will go fine. Sometimes you just have to go with what you're given and make the best of it.

Hello, Dolly! opens with a dress rehearsal on Thursday that our immediate families are invited to, and then we open this Friday night. Shows are the 9, 10, 12 (Chaz is missing this one), 16, 17, & 19. All starting at 7:30 pm.