My husband and I are learning the meaning of being "empty-nesters."  After actively parenting with children in the home for 35 years, this new station in life takes some getting used to.  We are finding that grand-parenting is actually a lot more fun and less stressful.  It is fulfilling to watch the new babies coming into the family and their parents going through the character-building adventures of raising them.  More cheap entertainment.  How nice that all of my nearly twenty grandchildren are the most wonderful, most talented, and most darling on the planet!  (No bias here. Just fact.)

          We did not realize, though, how boring mealtime can be with only two people at the table.  We don't feel the need to frugally budget to create an entire monthly meal calendar anymore, or discuss at length the weekly driving schedule of who needs to be driven where and picked up when and so forth.  (I do still have to be stocked with instant meals for 20 or more people at anytime, though, so I haven't seen our food budget actually decline yet.)  We find that we can actually have meaningful discussions on a broader range of topics or even break our standing house rule of never watching television during mealtime!  The best fix for boring meals, however, is getting together with family and friends as often as possible.

          At one such gathering last week, we decided to up and go on a spur of the moment get away.  My husband and I and my sister and my father decided to go to Cedar City to see a play at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.  I had never gone before and was delighted by the prospect.  We booked our hotel and reserved some tickets for an evening play and also a tour the next day.  We saw "A Comedy of Errors" presented in a replica of the Globe Theater in London.  This theater was built in the style of the Elizabethan Age and was very similar in size and construction to what was used in Shakespeare's day.  The house sat about 700 people and was arranged in such as way to have very good acoustics so that the actors did not need amplification to be heard.  We sat in the balcony on the far left and still saw and heard everything perfectly.

          The acting was superb and the sets and costumes were excellent.  This production was unique in that the play was re-imagined in a new setting.  The original play was set in the areas in and around ancient Greece.  This production was set in San Francisco during the Gold Rush of 1849.  The actors spoke the original Shakespearean text with a Southern (or Western) accent.  I was surprised how well the situation comedy fit this new setting, and more amazed at how well the language adapted to the new dialect.  The story itself played on such universal themes and situations, it is no surprise that it could hold up to a change of scene.  But, who would have thunk to watch and hear Shakespeare performed with a Southern twang?

          I whole-heartedly recommend visiting the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah.  Visit http://bard.org now to get your tickets!  I think I could get used to these spur of the moment get aways!

          Have you ever really considered the power of happy songs?  This past weekend, I sang in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Pioneer Day Concerts with guest artist Santino Fontana.  All of the songs we sang were upbeat and optimistic.  The camera guys often picked up the expressions of the audience members.  Their faces reflected the wonder and fun of the music being presented.  And seriously, how can you refrain from smiling when you hear and see the choir singing "Whistle While You Work" or "Put on a Happy Face?"  And the audience went wild with applause and yells and whistles when we joined Santino in singing our version of Pharrell Williams "Happy."  Check out this terrific concert on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir website:

A Summer Celebration of Song 2014

          I am constantly amazed at how a simple song can uplift the spirits and soothe the soul.  Last week, I had some of the concert music playing round and around in my head.  I found myself singing it unconsciously.  It just made my heart happy, even though there was a lot of emotional heaviness in my life that could have potentially weighed me down.  Those little light-hearted melodies of "She Likes Basketball" and "Ten Minutes Ago" and "Happy" kept playing over and over like a broken record stuck in one groove.  But I really didn't mind.  It lifted my spirits and sustained me through a rough week.
          When you look around and notice the tragic and awful things happening in the world, or when you turn on the radio or television, you are bombarded with news of disasters and human suffering.  There seems to be nothing you can do to ease the suffering or change the trajectory of what the bad guys are going to do.  But there really is something you can do.  You can sing:
 
       Spread sunshine all over the place -- just put on a happy face.  

          It is a little thing, but speaks volumes.  A smile and a song.  There you have it.  There is a lot of power packed into a happy song delivered with a happy face!

Announcing: 

The newest Children's Musical from BaileyKidsMusicals.com

"The Tale of Chicken Licken."  

          After working feverishly for the past week, I am happy to say that all of the ducks and chicks and geese are lined up and in order and will be ready to launch in a few days!  

          Watch a preview of this comical cautionary tale taped from my summer intensive Theater Camp.  These children were real troupers to attempt to learn and perform entirely new material including seven new songs in 10 days and 20 hours of rehearsal.  But just remember, the real title is "The Tale of Chicken Licken."