Amahl and the Night Visitors

I recently got to perform in an opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" (more detailed info on the opera here). It is a Christmas opera and I played one of the three kings: Balthazar.

The best part of the whole thing for me came after our final performance. An older woman (probably in her late 70s or early 80s) came up to me and thanked me for the performance. She said that her husband used to perform my role years ago and loved performing the opera every Christmas. She said my performance reminded her of her husband who had died 3 years ago and She thanked me for bringing back the memories of her late husband.

I have never been so touched or honored by any performance I have ever been a part of. It made all the work and effort (and makeup) worthwhile.

As for the makeup comment......

As we are about to come on stage Amahl says (sings) this line:

"There are three kings outside....and one of them is black!"

I'll let you guess which king I was. And just as proof of how lousy a "black king" I make, here are some pictures.

Sabrina's 1yr pictures

Yep, they're exactly what you'd expect from her. Radiant smile, cute clothes, fountain hair....That's one cute kid.

The summer outfits

It begins.

Now that it's regularly hitting the 90's in AZ, Marci finally gets to start dressing Sabrina in all the cute outfits she's been hoarding all winter.

Heaven help us all.

Is she part dog?

Sabrina has taken to putting a sock in her mouth and crawling around with it. It seems we always see her with a sock in her mouth - it's like she can't crawl around without it.

Very bizarre.

New Toys

Seems that both Sabrina and Gavin like to play with the new doll Sabrina got for her birthday.

Sabrina's 1st B-day

Here are some pictures of Sabrina's recently celebrated 1st birthday.

The swing? Oh, yes...we like it a LOT!















We're not too sure about cupcakes though....















Hmmm...seems that we like it after all...















Yes...we definitely like it.

Pebbles

Yes, this is Sabrina's new hairdo courtesy of Marci. Ain't it just fun?

Sabrina has asthma

Yep, just like Gavin, Sabrina has asthma. Poor kid. Isn't this the saddest picture of her you've ever seen?

Picture size

Sorry - I've been posting some pictures in the 4 most recent posts using a new method, I didn't resize the photos so, if you click on them, they are abnormally large.

Again - apologies. I may re-post them at a later time.

Jared

Sabrina's pink trench coat

There is absolutely no reason to post these pictures other than my desire to show you Sabrina's unbelievably cute pink trench coat that Marci bought for her.

Seriously - these pictures don't do it justice.

Gavin likes chocolate

This is Gavin working on one of the BIG Hershey's chocolate bars. He snuck it and we didn't know he was munching on it till we caught him in the act. Fortunately I had the camera with me - and yes, this is exactly the face he makes whenever he knows he's in trouble and tries to use his cute smile to get out of actually being punished.

Sabrina is cute

No, really - she is. Here are some random shots taken around the holidays this year.

Seeing the Christmas Lights

We went to see the Christmas lights on a couple of different nights - on this particular night it was probably the coldest night of the year (up to that point) so Marci made sure that our kids were dressed "warmly" - I'd say she went a little overboard with Sabrina.

Halloween - 2006

These are obviously a little late in coming, but I've been a little negligent in my blogging duties recently.

Anyway, I thought I would share these pictures of Gavin and Sabrina in their costumes. Caleb was Batman (again - he wore the same outfit as last year, so look in the archives to see pictures of Caleb as a rather, um...un-heroic...Batman