Anything Goes!

The end of Summer is closing in on us. As a matter of fact, the weather these past few days has felt more like football season than swimming season. Although, "cool" was the norm this summer.

There are just a couple more days left of summer camp at CCC. And that means that show week has come and gone. I didn't get in here to write about it because, frankly, I didn't have time. Production week at CCC is much like production week at any other theater I've been involved with. It's all-consuming. It involves evening dress rehearsals, opening night galas, naps for everyone and a party after every show. Somehow amongst all of that, I still have to go to work!

Here's a brief recap of our exhausting but oh-so-fun week.

The show poster was designed by three different kids. It was actually three posters merged into one. I was part of the small committee that made the selection. It was a hoot to look through all of the poster designs the kids came up with.

Audrey and Brennan opened the show with a couple of lines from

"Another Openin', Another Show!"

Audrey was concerned that Brennan was singing too loudly and she couldn't be heard. Uhh . . . no need to worry, darlin'.

Kevin, Will and Bihanna were three of the leads. They were remarkable!

Hallie and Will singing their duet.

Bihanna and her "angels"

Audrey and Sophie singing downstage!

Adrianna, Grace, Audrey and Natalie during "Heaven Hop."

This was Vivian's favorite song of the show. She knows all of the words. When she came to see the show with me on Friday, she jumped out of her seat and performed along.

Audrey can't contain her enthusiasm in front of an audience!

Random cast shot.

I feel like a song is about to start . . .

Here's most of the cast partying at the Wednesday night gala event on the deck after the show. Curt is DJing in this pic but he gave Brennan a quick training session and was free for the rest of the night.

That is . . . until the rain came.

Vivian, of course, joined in on the dancing. Here she is doing the Cha Cha Slide.

A scene from the closing performance cast party after the show on Sunday.

Laurie, always gracious, hands out thank you notes to parents and staff who helped with the show, the gala event, stuff all summer long. She takes time to speak about each person. Chris is getting his speech in this shot. We love Chris!

Sara had flowers for all of the kids.

Vivian bugging me while I'm waiting to get our thank you note from Laurie.



Our bartenders for most of the weekend: Smitty and Matt

Bartender? I don't need no stinkin' bartender. I helped myself. ;-)

Vivian and Mara decorated the house on the playground with Sara's flowers.

I have many more pictures and many memories to share. It's always bittersweet when the show ends. I miss the energy around CCC, partying with the parents and staff, seeing our kids performing their hearts out (I cried every performance!) and knowing that the summer is ending and we'll all be going separate ways after this. But we're also very tired and you just can't keep up that pace forever.

Thank goodness for Facebook since I'm friends with almost all of the summer camp parents!! And of course, Vivian will still be going to preschool there. Whew. it's going to be REALLY strange when she's in kindergarten and we don't go back there in the fall.

Sniff.

What's up with the bodily functions?

Not only is pooping in pools quite common, apparently puking in pools was a big deal this weekend as well.

As noted in Mark Maynard's blog from yesterday.

I had no idea this was such a frequent occurrence. I guess we would have been SOL at our neighborhood pool as well!! No WONDER the pool when empty when we drove by!

We just want to go swimming, ya'll!

The swimming gods were against us yesterday.

After several very mild weeks of summer (yikes - months), summer hit in full force yesterday with upper 90 degree temps and high humidity. All RIGHT! This is more like it!

Don't get me wrong -- I've actually enjoyed the mildness of summer so far. However, we've barely taken the girls to the pool and we've only pulled out the sprinkler ONCE so far, let alone the slip-n-slide (which is in a crumbled pile in the garage . . . dry as a bone). And don't even get me started on the fact that we canceled our weekend camping trip in Traverse City because of the cold, rainy weather that was expected all weekend. Yeah. Don't get me started. We spent our Friday vacation day all day at home without plumbing. More on that later. Not our best weekend.

So, when I heard that Sunday was going to be rain-free and 90+ degrees, I knew a trip to the pool was in our future.

First, I took the girls to church and then we enjoyed a family lunch. I promised a trip to the water park after we completed a few house projects. Audrey's room was a MESS (due to the previous rainy day on Saturday. What else is a kid supposed to do but wreck her bedroom?) Vivian didn't have any real projects but I made up some stuff. She put my shoes away and a few random things.

Nevermind that my project was the largest. I was going to clean out the garage come hell or high water. Curt worked in our basement all day on Saturday and I felt like I hadn't done anything productive all weekend. After cleaning the garage and dripping with sweat, I think I deserved that trip to the pool more than anyone else.

After about an hour, we were ready to take off. Our sights were set for the Rolling Hills Water Park. Yay! Fun for everyone. We drive past our neighborhood pool and see that it's hardly full. Curt surmises that most folks are just going to stay inside and enjoy their AC today. We might have the park to ourselves.

I WISH he were correct. We made it to Rolling Hills and found a huge line of cars. It wasn't until we reached the gate that we could make out the sign that said, "The park is at capacity" or something along those lines. Capacity? This place is enormous! I didn't know that was possible!

Audrey was thrilled because her vote was to go to Vets Park Pool anyway. We turned around and decided to give that a go. It wasn't ideal but at least one person in the car was going to be happy.

We hike it over to Vets park, pay our fee to get in (MUCH cheaper than Rolling Hills would have been . . . so another bonus) and I take Viv to the potty while Curt and Audrey find a place for us to camp out. The pool is PACKED by the way. I heard some rumblings over the intercom and then a mention about "two hours." People are moaning and groaning and it wasn't until I found Curt that I was told that there was a bio-hazard in the pool and everyone needed to evacuate . . . for two hours! Some kid pooped in the pool! We didn't even get so much as our toe in! WTF??

We gathered quickly (which wasn't difficult since we weren't really settled) and headed to get our money back. They will only give us a credit for another pool trip. No cash. Ugh. We are still hell bent to go swimming now so we take it and head to another pool.

Next up is Fuller pool since we've never been there (it's also the next-nearest pool). We figured we had nothing to lose at this point. This place is also PACKED but they have a huge water slide and the pool is quite large. I made note that the Ann Arbor folks that frequent Fuller Pool are relatively more fit and attractive than the other places we've visited. Hmm. I guess it was a younger crowd. We see several medi-flight helicopters come and go (we're near the UofM hospital) so that was cool for the kids. Vivian spent a lot of time dragging a life jacket around the pool (in and out of the water) and pretending it was her doggie.

Ahhhhh . . . we finally got some much-needed pool time. Who knew it was going to be so difficult????

Perhaps next time we should give our little neighborhood pool a try, eh?