Happy Easter

Happy Easter!  Three more productions this morning, and of course Easter starts before sunrise for us as we head off to get ready with make-up, costumes, and all kinds of details before service.  Plus a great breakfast and free flavored coffees and chai lattes with vanilla!  Our services had a quick turn-around for the morning with a 9am and a 11am service, and they went really well, even better than yesterday and Friday, actually.

Breakfast this morning!

The bird lady returns!  Dawn returned to the Isis wings in a last-minute move.

Here are those ginormous peacock fan costumes - we had two of them, one on each side.

Maddie is in this production, still on the big screen again for one last time.  Each show, Maddie shows up on the big scrim, a video of her running up to see Jesus at Palm Sunday just before that segment of the production begins.  I was honored to be a part of the twelve disciples again, once again playing James.  It's funny the conversations we're having at the Last Supper as the narrator speaks - we're usually talking about stage directions, or inside jokes.  We have to be careful though, as you can't laugh at all during key moments, like when Jesus lets us know that one of us will betray him.  Ivan has been so good as Jesus.  After he's taken off the cross, I have this one moment that I make sure to do - they're putting his body down backstage, the one they've completely wrapped up, so he's completely covered and blind as he's lowered to that concrete ground.  So as I come back that way, walking with him as a grieving apostle, I reach my hand downward to make sure he knows there's a hand behind his head to prevent him from making contact with the concrete.  I think one other highly amusing moment from production is the run from Palm Sunday out the lobby, down the stairs, through KidPak, up the halls, back through the music department and up the back stairwell to backstage.  There's not much time, and we have to move quickly.  Maddie made a fun video of us running by, a little Disciples 5K.

She was doing a lot of other photography while spending time with the actors.  She brought her polaroid too, and was taking some black and white photos as well. 

In between the noon service and the 3pm service there was another longer gap, but we stayed there at the church and had some wings to eat, and then actually played that card game "Lanterns" that I brought along.  Maddie, Jeremiah, Daniel (one of the disciples) and myself had a game there, and amazingly, Maddie wound up winning it.  It was fun.

We're all made-up, and of course we get touched up all the time.  We've got these costumes, and the palms too.  We were ready to go for the last one, and yeah, we're all rather worn out by this point.  Two rehearsals per day until Thursday, plus eight more performances - that's sixteen times we've done this thing.  But we nailed it, and it was a great closing moment to our Easter weekend together.   But it was an incredible experience.

It took a while to clean up, but we had some help there which was nice.  After about an hour or so of moving things about, the three of us were ready to go home, quite exhausted.  

Our Easter family picture, as we are... exhausted, covered in make-up, ready to go home!

First things first:  clean-up!  All that make-up and hairspray, and all the work we were doing running about... it was time for some showers!  And after that, I discovered my Easter basket that Mom made for me!

It's a "Wonka" themed basket, complete with candy, including the movie, sticker sheets, a t-shirt, plus a "Golden Ticket" boardgames as well!  Pretty nice!

And after that, we set up Maddie's Easter egg hunt.  Maddie had twelve eggs to locate somewhere on the main floor of the house.  Inside each one was one of the Twelve Disciples, as portrayed in "The Chosen."

Once Maddie found all twelve, she taped them together in the order seen by the number on each one, and then turned the entire taped thing over to reveal a completed QR code.  When scanned, that QR code told her to look... in the GUEST ROOM.

To complete the theme, Maddie got a "Chosen" themed Easter basket, with a new t-shirt, season three, and a few devotionals too.  She really liked it!  

As you might expect, we were super tired after all this day.  We closed out the day watching "Wonka" again, and you know something?  We actually liked it better the second time around.  It's a good movie - and yeah, we might find ourselves having a Wonka-fest this week, watching the other two movies over the next week.  Why not?

Anyway, Happy Easter.  It was a good day today.  One thing of note:  the last of the first generation of sea monkeys passed away this weekend.  That was a longer life-span that I anticipated - we got the sea monkey themed Easter basket last year.  I've been happy to come down to the kitchen to visit our pets each morning.  And it's not over yet - there's still at least four or five little ones still in there, the next generation of sea monkeys coming along.  We'll keep an eye on them, because yes, things just might keep going here.

We read tonight, and we said our prayers after that.  Sleep came super easy tonight, as we were really wiped out!  Happy Easter!