Repeat

Our first repeat of the week was our annual Hall 24th of July BBQ at Mom Hall's house.  We had the usual BBQ fixing and great salads and desserts.  In addition, we did our first Hall Pinewood Derby in the backyard (our first outdoor race).  It worked well after a couple of computer problems.  The little kids especially loved watching their cars cross the finish line.

For me...as Gary, Jena and I headed back to Logan the next day to attend "My Fair Lady".  Jena loves that play and I thought she would love to see it at the Utah Opera Festival.  At first I had only ordered tickets for Jena and I, but when I was in Logan last week I ordered an additional ticket for Gary.  His seat was a row behind ours and down a bit, but it was still a fun evening.

Heading to the theatre

The orchestra pit

We attended a pre-show where a volunteer talked about "My Fair Lady" and it's history.  It was fun.  Before it started, Jena and I went up and were able to look down into the orchestra pit.  I was amazed that it went all the way under the stage rather than being in front of the stage like you might see in other theaters.  Music for musicals is usually written for 32 piece orchestra but often is only played by 13-15 people now days because of cost.  Here they use the complete 32 people, one of the few places which still do.

These is an old style theatre which was redone 20 years ago.
 Here is a sample of one of the wall panels.

We all loved the show.  And we enjoyed the cookies and Aggie ice cream during the intermission. 

We headed back to Syracuse after the play and got home around midnight on Wednesday.  We needed our sleep since the next day, on Thursday, we had tickets to the Hale Theatre's production of "Sound of Music".  It was fun to again do two plays in two nights.  It was fun to compare the traditional stage and the theater in the round at the Hale Theatre.  It was different but awesome as well.  As I mentioned before, it is almost as much fun watching Jena enjoying a play as watching the play itself.  "Sound of Music" is another favorite for her so we had another great night.

Jena with her friend, Kaitlyn

Friday was "Cherry Hills Day" for the social club we are doing for the Utah Down syndrome Foundation.  Jena and I played in the water, especially the lazy river.  Gary drove the motorhome down in the afternoon and join us to play in the water for the evening.  Next to the water park was a campground where we spent the night.  We decided to have a little campout and try out some other features of the RV.  Our plan was to use the oven and the stove.  However when we finally got to the RV to start dinner, we realized we didn't have any matches to start the oven to cook our foil dinners.  I ended up just cooking them on the stove which was probably quicker anyway.  Then we headed to the miniature golf course and golfed form 10 to 11:30 at night.

Everything other than the oven worked great and we enjoyed out little night away.  We headed back to Syracuse (a trip of about 20 minutes) on Saturday.  We cleaned up the motorhome and parked it away until our next little trip.

Then Gary and I got cleaned up and headed for the final event of our party and production week.....a "Neil Diamond" concert in Salt Lake inside the REAL soccer stadium.  Yes, he is old, but it still was an amazing concert with him singing (and lots of the audience) many of his great hits. 

Preparing for the concert

Our self-picture--
after teasing our girls about doing it all these years.

We loved it.  It was a great end to a month which started off with fireworks and the Beach Boys and included so many great productions.  It was our "stay-cation" this year.