Behind the Scenes Tour

**Post updated to include the press review , a JSOnline article about the girl who plays Tiny Tim and the press release.**


In the last couple of weeks we have learned a lot about what goes into putting together a pretty large scale professional theater performance. While this is not Alyssa's first theater experience, I'd be willing to venture that it's the biggest time commitment she has had, in probably the grandest production she has been a part of. I thought I would give you a little tour of what she's been doing the last several weeks.

First up was perfecting an English accent. Again, not her first time having to speak with an English accent, but it was her first time to work with a dialect coach. We ran into her dialect coach, Jill at a Starbucks, and she is so nice. No wonder Alyssa loved the dialect sessions so much.

The weekend after her birthday, my parents came up to spend time with Alyssa and after going out for lunch, we walked her up to practice in the main rehearsal hall, The Hub. The next several photos were taken by Emma or Rebekah as they explored the hall.

Getting her petticoat off the rack.

A huge dress goes over this petticoat, she feels like a princess when she gets in costume.

Where her stage shoes wait for her to put them on.

Emma was fascinated with all the props in the rehearsal hall. This is a model of what the stage in the Pabst will look like for the performances.

The Christmas goose.

More food props. Fun, behind the scenes info: There is a fezziwig scene in which there are tables of fake food that the children are supposed to be eating from in the background as the scene plays out. The children's director thought the kids' acting looked slightly forced as they were eating fake food, so she arranged for real small gingerbread cookies to be tucked in among the props. So when the kids look like they are really have a snack on stage ~ they are! Alyssa was so impressed they would do this to make the scene look more natural.

Rebekah outside the entrance to The Pabst.

Emma on the other side of The Pabst.

At the beginning of Tech Week, Dave was able to go with Alyssa on a tour of the Pabst. The Hub where they had previously been practicing is in an ajoining building, so there were all new dressing rooms and such to familiarize herself with, not to mention the beautiful theater itself. This is a grainy cell phone pic, but it is gorgeous.

Her costume rack. She is so excited about each of her costumes, and she has quite a few changes to make, so she has an assistant to help her with that. She also serves as a helper to Tiny Tim during costume changes.


Last night was opening night for the Friends and Family Preview.

Curtain Call.

I knew my mother in law would love to see as many photos of the theater as possible. Here is the best shot I could get of the balconies. The whole theater is beautiful. Alyssa claims the middle section {1st Balcony} is the best vantage point. I thought the seats we were given in the orchestra section were awesome.

Excited family and friends ready for the performance to begin.

Looking from the lobby down into the theater.

The hallway that led to the bathrooms, because I am showing you all the most important locations, after all.

Alyssa was so happy that a couple of her friends were able to come see opening night ~ Thank you for being there, Katie and Megan {not pictured :-( }!

My parents drove up to see the play, which did not end until after 10pm, on a weeknight in which they had to work the next day. Saying thank you is not enough! Alyssa was so glad you were there. All she talked about all week long was how excited she was for everyone to see the play, she would have loved to fly in all Dave's family in from Hawaii to see it, had that been a possibility.

Rebekah fell asleep in the second act, so our post show family picture is a bit of a bust. Alyssa chose our outfits for the evening ~ she wanted us to wear purple and black.

One more photo of Alyssa and Katie.

Alyssa was so excited after the preview last night, that she could hardly sleep {even though she needed to ~ badly!!} She kept asking me what my favorite part was and if I saw her actually eating the cookies during the Fezziwig scene {yes! She took the command to really eat something seriously :-) } They have the press preview tonight, and officially open on Friday. I thought the entire cast was amazing, if you're local and can go, I think you would enjoy it immensely.

Congratulations, Alyssa. We are so very proud of you! Keep doing what you're doing.

Watermelons are the new Pumpkins

Our autumn weekends have passed us by way too quickly! We did not have the chance to do many of the fun fall things that we usually do. The first weekend in October I got my wisdom teeth pulled, so we did not do a whole lot that weekend, then the following two weekends in a row I coached gymnastics, and I never coach on Saturdays so that threw those weekends for a loop. Finally, during the last weekend of the month, Dave and I were out of town. The Tuesday after we returned, Alyssa started A Christmas Carol rehearsals, so even when we do have a spare moment at home, she's never here, and it seems like we are stuck in this holding pattern, just waiting for her to get home so we don't do anything fun without her. It kind of feels like a Fall Fail on the part of keeping up with little traditions we enjoy. We didn't visit any pumpkin farms or even buy or carve a single pumpkin this year. Oh well, time marches on and there's always next Fall.

The first week of November I still had not harvested our remaining watermelons from over the summer.

But once they were picked and lined up on the back bench, they looked almost as cute as a row of pumpkins sitting out there. And about those pumpkins we tried to grow this summer...yep, that's them in front of the watermelons. What started out looking so promising as beautiful orange blooms with a little pumpkin sprout at the bottom eventually failed to grow.

I debated letting the girls paint the watermelons {I'm pretty sure it's too late to eat them} or even try to carve them. It can't possibly be any harder than scooping out pumpkin guts, right? But it might just be time for them to go to the compost pile. So regardless of my desire to make watermelons the newest autumn trend, I would likely have a very difficult time convincing the rest of the family that watermelons could take the place of pumpkins as an appropriate Thanksgiving sidedish.

A few photos of the girls to serve as a reminder to myself that we really have done something other than run from place to place in the last several weeks...

Dave took the two younger girls to Laternennacht {Night of the Lanterns} while Alyssa was at rehearsal, and I coached.

Rebekah chose some German Dance dresses that she would like to wear. Miss Irene better get busy on these soon if each girl is going to have anything this intricate by GermanFest in July!!

Emma spent a great deal of time working on building a castle for their German Castle unit.

Rebekah has played lots of my little pony lately. Poor Dave was trying to watch an Iowa game less than two feet away from these ponies in all their beautiful glory.

We went to a Hearts and Hands quilting night at school where each family was given a quilt square to design and the squares will be assembled into beautiful blankets and sent to an orphanage in Bolivia. We also were able to design squares with the letters of the alphabet to hang up in one of their classrooms.

Our sweet teenage birthday girl on the morning of her 13th birthday! She was in love with these jeans from Dave's parents. They are a really dark denim wash with a super sparkly sheen to them. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!

The weather was nice enough today for me to go for jog outside earlier today. What a blessing, and at least a little surprising for the end of November ~ I love to exercise outdoors so much more than inside! So maybe Fall is not gone for good yet...

The GACRT brings us to Florida

Our annual Great American College Road Trip {GACRT} game brought us out of the Big Ten this year to Jacksonville, Florida to see the always anticipated rivalry game between Florida and Georgia. It was definitely a different feeling to not be seeing an Iowa game ~ this was only the second year in the 12 year history of the GACRT that the game didn't involve Iowa football, and the first time Dave didn't purchase, pack up and transport the food for the tailgate. He didn't really even have a huge emotional investment in the game either {although we were rooting for Florida}, so it was a very different GACRT, but also so much fun. Thanks Michelle and Andy for organizing this year!

Our first stop {besides Chick-fil-A} after flying into Orlando was Fort Caroline, France's first attempt at a permanent settlement in the United States. It was a cool fort, I just kept thinking how strange it was to be exploring a National Park without the girls along.

I kept noticing all the things I knew they would love, like this tiny grass hut, the pile of shells and the hairy trees.

The plantation area of the park was also incredibly interesting. We bought the girls a book there called Love Twelve Miles Long. Such a good book, I cried the first time I read it to them.

At The Landing in Jacksonville, the night before the game.

The whole reason for our journey to Florida ~ to experience SEC football!

The view from the stadium as the sun was setting was amazing, too bad the game was in a horrible state {at least from the Florida side of the stadium} by this point.

A small side note about the Great American College Road Trip tradition: even though I haven't been to every one of the 12 past games, I feel like we are far enough into this tradition that it is so much fun to reminisce about past games and dream about games in the future. A look ahead at plans for future games ~
2013: Iowa @ Nebraska
2014: Iowa @ Pitt
{a few undecided years that are not written in stone yet}
2020: @ Iowa for the 20th anniversary
2025: @ Hawaii for the 25th anniversary (please everybody jump on board with this idea!)

How much fun is that to think about?! And some potentially good news is that Alyssa is almost old enough to be the official GACRT Camp Counselor for anyone wanting to bring little ones with.

After the game Dave and I drove to St. Augustine. This is the waterfront restaurant where we ate dinner, the picture within the picture was our table. It was nice to sit down and eat a relaxing dinner that didn't involve any ketchup.

St. Augustine is the oldest city in the U.S. and it's just beautiful! I wish we had more than one day there.


The evidence of superstorm Sandy's passage through the St. Augustine area. This is a couple views of the parking lot at Castillo de San Marcos.

Castillo de San Marcos was another really neat National Monument that the girls would have loved. The castle-like structure is the oldest masonry fort in the United States. It was Spanish built and run in the years right after Chrisopher Columbus's final transatlantic voyage.

The castle was complete with drawbridges, dungeons and cannons.


These are some of the neater rooms and include a church alter, a treasure room, a prison, a room that served as what we might now call a "panic room" and some bunks. In the bunk bed photo ~ four men would be assigned to that one bunk, two in each bed. And all of their belongings were limited to what they could hang on the hooks on the side, and fit on the little shelf underneath.



This is the real Fountain of Youth discovered by Ponce de Leon. This was as close as we got to it, it costs $12 to go in, and we didn't have enough time to make it worth paying to get in. So while our youth is important to us, there's a price limit we set on it and I guess that price is less than $24.

The most delicious and perfect mini cupcakes ever.

Our last stop before coming back home was in Orlando for Universal Studios' Halloween event. Basically they turn the entire park into a haunted house. It was fun, but way too crowded. Maybe we have just been spoiled by visiting theme parks during off-peak times, but the well over one hour waits for every.single.attraction got old really quick. I also had myself worried beforehand that it was going to be scarier than it really was ~ it was reassuring to figure out that the scary characters that roam the park are trained not to actually touch the park guests. The Penn and Teller NEWKD Vegas was my favorite part. It's definitely a different way to experience a theme park, but now that I've seen it, I don't feel like I would go again.

These are the beautiful flower bouquets the girls made for me while we were away. All the flowers came out of my parent's yard, so I hope they still have some left :-).

We are very thankful to my parents who always gladly watch the girls and love them so well while we are away! My mom even came all the way up to our house so the girls wouldn't have to miss school on Friday in our absence. Thank you, thank you!! You both made a great and relaxing weekend possible for us, and I know the girls loved every minute of being with you.