The Train is Back

So we have a train on stage again, and it looks pretty good!  The Cowboy Christmas series is on the way, and so far things area looking pretty good.  We're working on about three or four different fronts now, with that series of course, but also the Christmas Spectacular set-up going on - we're filming shepherds tomorrow night.  And there's this preschool thing we're also working on too, dabbling in that a bit.  And of course, "How the Grinch Found Christmas."   

Tonight we had our practice, and that was about three hours.  We have four practices this week, and yes, time is drawing close to the big event.  It was a late night.  Maddie didn't have any practice or taekwondo or church tonight, which was a rare thing of late, but a great thing so she could stay home and rest.  Mom is still sick, and the two spent the evening together watching old Disney Chanel television show episodes with the theme of Christmas.  They had a fun time!

It was a busy day though.  We're sort of dealing with issues as they fly at us, the usual things that come to you with Christmas productions:  costumes, people missing practices, music tracks, blocking, graphics, screens, and so on.  I really miss just working on the series that we're on now with the cowboys - which is why I spent a good little bit working on that skit this weekend.  It'll be a new skit, and Maddie will be on stage with a few of the others, all in cowboy hats of course.  They'll be gathering around the fire, with Daniel as the engineer and me as the cookie, something like the character of Sidemeat from Riders in the Sky, although I certainly won't be as zany as he is.  Questionable food though, that will be good.  It's going to be a good series, come to think of it, a chance to relax and just sit around the fire and sing cowboy songs and tell bad jokes.  Like usual!

We read some more from "Wintersmith" tonight, and we're really into this latest story.  Miss Treason is a great character, a lot of fun, and it's always a fun challenge to read the Nac Mac Feegles.  But winter is coming.  It's a funny theme to things - we nailed down our Summer Xtreme theme as "Tropical Freeze," which is somewhat based on a Donkey Kong game where ice and snow come to a tropical environment.  And we were thinking it would be fun to have our beach series interrupted by Summer Xtreme and the tropical freeze.  Fun idea, right?  So immediately after that there's this Ghostbusters sequel where they literally have a sudden freeze hit New York in the middle of summer, where things are usually super hot.  The trailer just dropped, and we were all amazed at the timing - it's a confirmation, really.  Tropical Freeze is coming this summer.  And right now, we're reading about the Wintersmith.  Maybe all this talk of snow and ice will bring a little cold precipitation to us this winter.  We kind of want to see a little snow, right?

Anyway, we said our prayers tonight, and were off to bed quickly.  I'm pretty beat after the long day!