Summer 2023: Part II - Summer Camps and Vocal Arts Festival 2023

During my first week at the Vocal Arts Festival, Tyler and Allison attended Space camp. Oscar typically picked them up since it ended at 3:30pm each day, but on their final day I finished early with rehearsals and was able to come see all the projects they'd been working on that week. 

We got our standard summer rain storms. One was the same night Emily and family were arriving for a brief pit stop on their way to Utah. The storm was even worse in Kansas, which delayed their coming a bit, but they still arrived safely.

Oscar made pizza for their arrival, and the cousins jumped on the trampoline both that evening and the next morning before continuing their drive.

Oscar enjoyed the beautiful scenery on his day time runs

The first week I played Adalgisa in a scene from the opera "Norma." I had nice classy makeup for dress rehearsal.

And I had much more makeup on for the performance. 

I finally met my mom's cousin Lily Anne who now lives about an hour away from me and 30 minutes away from downtown. She came to see me in the first scenes performance.

The kids worked on fun projects at the YMCA.

Falcon shot off Independence Day fireworks on Saturday July 2nd. They were really well done, and it was nice to have them so close and not have to deal with big crowds.

Cute patriotic kids!

July 4th itself had bizarre weather. We attended a party at our neighbor's house again. They set it up in their garage and driveway, since it's usually plenty warm in July. It was nice and warm in the morning, hence the kids' tanks and short, but then dark clouds and thumbnail sized hail rolled in shortly before 6pm. 

Unfortunately Tyler started feeling sick that day. He didn't stay up for fireworks, and he missed two days of non-refundable summer camp. The one day he went he was miserable.

Allison enjoyed the sparklers. Tyler played inside for a bit then just wanted to go to bed.

Throughout the month Oscar worked on creating a cover for the pergola. 

This time of year brought back the return of speedy bunnies running all over the neighborhood.

Tyler found several bits of his KRAVE cereal stuck together.

At the end of that week we had our next scenes performance. In "Cosi fan tutte" dress rehearsal I wore this blue dress, but Martile didn't care for it and wanted us to wear period costumes for the performance.

Since there was an intermission and then a pretty long scene I wasn't in, Oscar took the kids to the nearby park while I changed into my Penelope costume for "Bye Bye Birdie."

The kids got a great view of me since they always sit on the 2nd level and all the teenage girls run to the center of the balcony for our first "We Love You Conrad" song. I was told I made a very compelling 15 year old.

Oscar did some recording from this scene. We basically put on a highlight version of the show with all the well known songs. Here's "The Telephone Song" from where I come in as Penelope.

Here's the "We Love You Conrad" reprise. This show has so much shouting that I had to mark during all the rehearsals to keep from wearing my voice out. But since I was done singing "Cosi," I let it all out.

I love this shot of me jumping in the air from "One Last Kiss." The pic on the right is from "We Got a Lot of Livin' To Do."

Here's our group photo after the show with our choreographer and pianist.

The next day I did some hiking with friends from the VAF since we had time off until 6:30pm. We attempted to do 7 Bridges, but Google misled us, and we ended up in the surrounding trails of Helen Hunt Falls.

We saw some nice scenery though.

Heavy rain that hadn't been in the forecast started coming down as we hiked, so we're glad we weren't on the longer 7 Bridges hike during that. We got back in the car and decided to drive to the "Garden of the Gods" instead.

Luckily the weather cleared up by the time we arrived, and we were able to do some more hiking.

The group was pretty happy after the previous disappointment. Carrie had been there before, but Hannah and Onyx hadn't.

Hana and Carrie posed with some rock formations

And Onxy was clearly in his element.

We had a yummy Indian lunch at "Zaika," and I hiked the nearby Red Rock Canyon open space the next day during a break in rehearsals. 

For our final scenes program, we sang a tribute concert to Ira Gershwin. The hands down favorite scene was "Of thee I sing" and the puns about corn muffins. Oscar said we should have sold them for refreshments during the intermission since everyone wanted corn muffins after that scene. 

My solo was "A Foggy Day in London Town." It was a little low for me, but not as low as Judy Garland sings it. It took me a while to feel comfortable with it, and Jaime did a good job helping me figure out how to incorporate my classical training into it so I didn't feel so much like a fish out of water.

Here's the full show