Mothers Day!

Usually for Mothers Day, we do something like go out to eat, which is all fine and good, but this year we did something much more suited to Mom and her personal tastes. This year, we set up a picnic at Abalone Cove state park, up on the cliffs of Palos Verdes. It was Kelli's idea, especially to set it up using her antique China. Mom just loved it!

Setting up with Kelli.

After Lunch, it was time to hike down the cliff to the beach where we occupied ourselves for an hour with a game of rock throwing. Yes. Someone would pick a target and we would see who could get closest to it. Sort of like rock bocce. :)

I'm dangerous when throwing anything, so eventually I just picked up the camera and enjoyed myself documenting instead of nearly hitting my mother with several rocks. That would not have been a very nice Mother's Day gift!

Such a beautiful day, and a wonderful time had by all of our family. :) Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. Thanks for all you do for your families and those around you!

Hello, May!

It's been a little while since I've posted. Mostly I've been up to my eyeballs in work, wedding planning, and moving! (GULP).

Yes, I've decided to give up the little house that I love and move home with my parents until the wedding so I can save some money for Jason and I to start with.

One of the things I've been working on is our wedding website and finalizing all of the details:

www.theknot.com/ourwedding/ErinFarrell&Jason Speer

Other than that, I've been working a ton (both on ALL SHOOK UP and substitute teaching), cleaning and getting ready to pack up and move out.

Last night, when I was working at Starlight, our Xpress group continued working on their new material from Chicago (Xpress is sort of difficult to explain, but they do performances around the area, and this year their season is comprised of material from 4 musicals...) Aside from the fact that they almost made me go stark raving mad (that happens sometimes...), I was smacked in the face with a story from last summer and twelve years back, one that I wanted to share.

When I was fifteen, and had to work on my high school musical as part of Advanced Dance, I was privileged to do some of the choreography, along with my best friend Solange, and our teammate, Connie. As a thank you at the end of the musical, the high school bought us tickets to the national tour of CHICAGO, which had just started it's revival run on Broadway. I'm pretty confident that they didn't know the content of CHICAGO when they sent us, but I thank God they didn't because I just LOVED IT. If you read one of my older posts, you will know that this is when my life began to change.

Fast forward 11 years to last summer, when I was leading a study abroad for World Learning in the UK. We had limited funds to see a show on the West End, and the only one that had tickets we could afford and enough seats for all twelve of us was CHICAGO. This was not the show that my group wanted to see. In fact they all wanted to see just about anything else. But still, we went. It was the same revival production of CHICAGO that I had seen all those years ago in Los Angeles, with the exact same staging and the Fosse choreography. I was mesmerized, all over again. What I realized when I saw it was just how influential that single production had been in my career as a director and choreographer. Everything about the bare bones style that I prefer to stage shows in, everything about the speed of the storytelling, everything about the use of the stage, orchestra and audience reflects how I choose to work today. I was dumbfounded because I had truly never realized how influenced I had been by that single production.

I have seen so many incredible shows since then (shows that may truly have been "better") and have taken away many amazing moments and ideas, but NONE has hit me so personally as CHICAGO. So, thank you Mrs. Vorhis and West High School for sending me to see that production. I cannot express what it did for me.

Arts and Crafts

This may strike you as odd, or offend your personal tastes and activities, but I HATE Arts and Crafts. I have never had the patience for them. For the last two days, I have been leading the Arts and Crafts project from hell in this classroom.

Imagine if you will, an overflowing class of 35 sixth graders. Their teacher moved to Seattle just before Spring Break, and they got a long-term substitute to finish the year out. The long-term sub got married last weekend and is on her honeymoon this week, so they have a sub for their sub. On top of that, this long-term sub must have previously taught elementary school because she left three (count em - THREE) arts and crafts projects for us to work on in Science this week. IN SCIENCE. Nevermind the learning process, let's make Rainmakers! And tear up little bits of green and blue paper to make a collage Earth! And paint coffee filters with water colors to make ANOTHER Earth! In her defense, it is Earth Week, but what about educating them on pollution, recycling, and being a good steward of our natural resources? Obviously, I'm a little frustrated. And I get that she has Open House Night coming up and doesn't have anything to show for it, but why do I have to be the craft master? She obviously LOVES crafts, and well... I obviously don't.

You should have seen the classroom. RICE EVERYWHERE. In addition to little bits of tinfoil, cardboard, glue, construction paper. Not to mention all of the boys who thought it was funny to beat each other with parts of their project when I was otherwise occupied. It was CRAZY. THEY were crazy.

Observation: In Middle School, when someone is hitting, kicking, touching or otherwise invading another's personal space, it's always the boys. It was CRAZY. THEY were crazy.

I'm done with crafts for today. Maybe for life. We'll see how I feel tomorrow, because right now I'm just DONE.

Venue!

We have a venue and a date!

We will be getting married on October 2, 2010 at the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey!!!!

Jason and I went on Saturday (along with my mom, my sister Kelli, Jason's Grandma Joyce and Aunt Irene) for an appointment to view the venue, and just LOVED it. Plus, the events coordinator, Lorri, is great and so helpful! So we did it! We put our deposit down and it just felt right!

We also began our registries at Bed, Bath and Beyond (they were so great and helpful!), Target and.... REI. Yes, REI. Watching Jason with the scan gun was hilarious. I DID manage to commandeer it for a little while!

It feels amazing to have SO MANY decisions made (our venue provides many of the things that I THOUGHT I was going to have to hunt for) so I can relax and enjoy just being engaged!

If you'd like to see what our venue looks like all dressed up for a wedding, check out the link!

Other than that, we had a wonderful visit with Grandma Joyce and Aunt Irene this weekend. They were SO wonderful and generous, we had a beautiful visit to Catalina Island and many great adventures (mostly involving wedding plans!). :)

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

http://www.bellapictures.com/venueMontage/index.php?venue=californiayachtclub

Full Steam Ahead!

I saw Batman on Roller Blades today. Not the point of this post, but wanted to share.

The wedding plans are in full swing! The only bummer about choosing an October wedding (I know... less than six months ALREADY!) is that all major plans needed to happen two months ago! At least it's October. If we were trying for this summer, we would definitely be screwed. All of the planning has felt a little bit overwhelming on top of my escalating Starlight schedule (youth theatre company I work for.... our calendar for the next three months makes me want to throw up) and working as much as I can for the rest of the school year (since as of right now, I have no work this summer - prayers, please!).

Yesterday was my first "trying on dresses" day. So fun! That put some wind back in my planning sails. Can't post any photos here for fear of a snooping fiance (love you, baby), but suffice it to say I have a very good idea of what my style of wedding dress is, and it's very different from what I thought it would be. 'Nough said.

I woke up this morning with renewed location hunting energy, and found a place we didn't know existed that just might be perfect for both of us! We're going to visit on Saturday morning to see if it's as perfect as we think it is. If that doesn't work out, we have another location that we're looking at (a gorgeous one!) but since it was where my sister also had her ceremony and reception (which was amazing!), I'm struggling with the thought of having a very similar wedding.

Can I just say that finding a reasonably affordable ceremony and reception location in Los Angeles is crazy difficult? For what we'll end up paying here, I could have the party of the century somewhere in the Midwest!

In the meantime, Jason's Grandma and Aunt Irene are flying in tonight for a weekend visit. I'm very excited to meet them and thrilled to visit Catalina Island for the day tomorrow. I haven't been in years, and am looking forward to having an engaged and planning-free day with Jason, Grandma Joyce and Aunt Irene. :)

Will update with photos ASAP. Hope your April is going well!

Engaged!

I got engaged on Friday. Really, truly engaged to the love of my life, the man who has become my life partner in the blink of an eye. And it has caught everyone by surprise - everyone that is except the two of us (although it DID surprise me, I have been ready since December), our immediate families and our best friends. For those of you who DON'T know, we met and began dating in October, and both of us knew for certain that we had met our life partner by December.

Because of the kind of person I am, I've always known that when I met that person and knew that I had met that person, that I would be completely impatient and ready to move forward with the rest of our lives. So for me, the last four months have been a very impatient wait... especially because Jason played me the whole time, and I truly believed that we would not be getting engaged for MONTHS! He is such a turkey!

So, Jason asks me to set aside Friday night for a special date. You know how that is, you're a couple, so you're always going out and making plans but somewhere along the line you stop having real dates. So we went out on a REAL DATE!

He surprises me with a GORGEOUS bouquet of roses, and then takes me out for dinner - a surprise - at the restaurant where we had our first date, and we sit at the same table we sat at, and have a wonderful time without that nervousness of our first date. (At the first date we talked for HOURS.)

After dinner it's down to the beach

for a walk where we take Jason's dog, Indy, on a long walk every weekend. Jason gets a backpack out of the car. I assume it's for a little dessert picnic (I don't know HOW I didn't know!). As we're walking, I look over at Jason and his cheeks are BRIGHT RED (STILL I don't know. STILL!). We walk out onto the sand, and he tells me to turn around and close my eyes so he can set everything up (Still. STILL!). When he asks me to turn around, he's kneeling with a diamond and asks, "Erin Farrell, will you marry me?" To which I immediately shake my head up and down like a bobble head to say YES, because I can't make my mouth form any words, and then tackle him in the sand. After which I proceed to sit and cry and blubber, smile and cackle for the next thirty minutes. Poor Jason... his poor heart can't handle it when I cry, even for joy. :)

He knows me so well. The ring is an antique, a diamond cut that hasn't been made for 100 hundred years, and has been in his family since at least 1940. It couldn't be more perfect. 1.1 carats of sparkling antique diamond on a simple gold band. :)

I love Jason for who he is - a man with a generous and loving heart, who sees the world and his place in it uniquely. A man with no pretensions, who doesn't realize how truly special and unique he is. My gentle giant and loving bear. A humble man who knows what he loves and loves what he does. An artist in a very different way from me, who is patient with my quirks and understands my moods. Who supports me unconditionally, and whom I support in turn. He is truly the man I have been praying for all my life. I am so grateful to have found him. (I am crying AGAIN.)

Although it has caught everyone I know by surprise, we are overjoyed and so ready to move forward in our life together. We are so different and so similar, and fit into each others lives and families perfectly. I already love his family, and he loves mine.

So thank you for all of the well-wishes. We are SO THRILLED to begin our lives together!!!!!!!!!!!!

Science Project Season.

Science Project Season is upon us!

Again.

On Friday, while subbing, I had this conversation with a 7th grade boy (who I've also had in an acting class).

7th Grader: "Ms. Farrell, you'll never guess what my friends and I are doing for our science project."

Me: "I'm sure I can't."

7th Grader: "Guess!"

Me: "I honestly have no clue. What?"

7th Grader: "We're making a BRA with POCKETS! Isn't that awesome?"

Me: "Wow. Are you sure that's okay for a science project?"

7th Grader: "YEP! We checked!!!!!"

Yes. This is my life.