"My kids were very embarassed by me."

What an excellent little show these kids put on here at Randolph Air Force Base. I'm really proud of our last week. We had a great show to finish out our summer tour.

So, with the summer tour over, I'm looking at some real worrysome money issues over the next few days. Hopefully all will take care of itself in a timely fashion and we won't have to stress out too much.

Even though I'm so worried about that, I still can't find myself being unhappy. Its been nice reflecting on the last 10 weeks, what a great job I have, and what an excellent set of experiences this summer has brought. I had the thought today, that I wasn't dreading starting work again...even though I haven't started my vacation yet. I'm thankful for that.

This week's question during our call-in was "What is your favorite moment of the summer?" Unfortunately, Casey and I's responses were both pretty goofy, rather than anything genuine and sympathetic, and sweet, touching, etc. Really, our season has been somewhat devoid of those moments. There hasn't been that special case where a girl came off stage crying with excitement or anything like that. Great kids, no really special stories.

Then this week, the Gnomes got such a resounding applause when they left the stage they could hardly contain their excitement. Of course, I had to promptly shush them, but they were jumping, clapping, and celebrating with each other the instance they got off stage. It was great to see.

Randolph Air Force Base has featured some of the nicest, most cordial people we've worked with all summer. On both Tuesday and Wednesday we were invited over to some parents houses for some great dinners. Both made a spicy chicken entree...different ones, and both pretty good. The second one especially...I should've gotten the recipe. Damn was it good.

Another mother bought us Subway for Lunch on Tuesday, and brought us each those Oscar Meyer Deli Creations (which are AWESOME) on Wednesday. Casey and I normally don't eat lunch, we drink Slim Fast in the mornings and skip lunch in the laziest attempt at weight loss ever known to man.

There was one particular mother that must be blogged. On Monday, we cast her Son (as Rumpelstiltskin) and her youngest daughter as a bee. Her middle daughter didn't make it. She tried some very stringent negotiation with us after the rehearsals. I held strong against her. Before she asked "Well, if anyone drops out, will you put her on a list or something?" Having had no one drop out at all this summer, and knowing that this would put the button on her tactics, I replied, "Yes, if anyone drops out, I'll absolutely call her first." Before they left, they spent a long time in the corner, the 4 of them in the family. I'm pretty sure she tried to convince her son to drop his role of Rumpelstiltskin so the middle daughter could be in the show...(She told us the middle daughter wanted to be there the most, and he the least.) They didn't come back and talk to us, but Rump was late to the rehearsal claiming "there was some stuff...but, I got it taken care of."

Well, eventually her daughter was cast, because we had a few drop outs. Then, on show day, Mother dearest, while intruding in our dressing room made her daughter switch dresses with another girl because hers was too big. They're all too big. We told her that, she switched them anyway. The other girl ended up deciding to play a boy because the dress was so big. (It was more sutied to her to be a boy anyway.)

Well, after all this...after the show was over, this mother came up to us and said. "I know I'm difficult, thank you for putting up with me, my kids were all very embarrassed. They told me I should apologize." We accepted.

Speaking of how nice this residency was...our contact got us free tickets to Schiltterbahn Water Resort...one of the biggest water parks in the country to go to on our day off this week. We went today and really had alot of fun, even though thrill rides/slides aren't Casey's thing..I did a few things by myself while Casey lounged in the rivers, hot tobs, wave pools and the like. Then, the sky opened it up and it began to rain. So not only did we spend our day off surrounded by even more children, it got rained out. We waited for about 2 hours as everyone got on shuttles and such to get to their cars...and just as we got to the other side of the park (its seperated by several blocks, spread out over 65 acres) the clouds cleared up and the rains stopped. Even though the ride I really wanted to go on was back where we just were, we took advantage and I rode some of the tube rides I'd missed earlier.

People make me really upset sometimes. While we waited in line for the bus, there were two people who attempted to cut in line behind us, in front of way over 150 people. Another women kept rudely yelling at the people working. Also, another man was complaining about how they weren't filling up all the seats...he even had the audacity to yell at the workers once he was boarding the bus about it. There well over 1,000 people all waiting for the busses out in the rain, and these select few felt they were special enough to insist their problems on the staff. Who do they think they are? I enjoyed putting sunblock on in the rainstorm, trying to give the disappointed kids and parents around me a laugh. After all, they'd paid for their day.

The process of check-in in Missoula and getting home now begins...