What a wonderful....but very short....tour this was. The three young ladies were just delightful from beginning to end and I couldn't have asked for more impressive and thoughtful LAMB ambassadors. It was great to see how much they admire and appreciate the work of the tours that have gone before them. They even paid tribute to the other seven older actors by pretending to "be" them on the way home. I would hear, "Okay....from Caravan One" and then they would pretend to be Alissa, Reed, John-Emmett and Emily. Then there would be a switch to "Caravan Two" and each of the girls would impersonate Reed, Jack, Lauren or Grace. It was really fun...and funny. I was treated to impressions of Mr. Donny and Mr. Wooley. I discovered that I must be Earth Mother in their minds as when they were portraying me it was full of ..."Open yourself up to feeling......." and "I need to find my inner pillow." (Whatever THAT means....I kinda like the image!)
The girls did a beautiful job with the show and it really grew over the performances. Prior to each performance and after we had set the stage up, we would work through the show adding bits and cleaning things up. I am always amazed at how willing and capable our LAMB kids are to adapt to new surroundings and to challenge themselves to continually improve themselves. These lessons learned through touring will serve them well throughout their lives.
Thank you to the brave parents who "lent" me their precious offspring. Your girls brought so much joy to so many people. Over those two performances, we played to 870 people. Pretty cool. I loved it when a little child ran up to me and grabbed my hand after the show and pulled me down with all her strength to whisper in my ear, "Do you think I can be an actress?" The looks of both boys and girls of all ages said so much as they waited in lines for an autograph or a photo after the show. Our girls never acted tired or rushed but made each one feel very special. From the little boy who buried his head into Josie's apron and clung so tightly after he finally got to the front of the line for a photo to the boy who left his cane with his aide to be surrounded by the girls for a picture....our LAMB girls really made an impact. I realized what a wonderful program has developed over the years at LAMB and found myself at a loss when a grandmother asked me what she should do with her talented granddaughter as she would love to give her the kind of experiences and chances to develop her creative talents the way our girls have. We are blessed here at LAMB to have had wonderful role models for our students in those students who have gone before them. We are blessed to have a strong and nurturing program where kids can be so successful. I am so thankful to our great parents and our talented students. Thank you Grace, Josie and Hillary for proving that even younger kids can do a great job at touring. Thank you for being so very, very considerate....and for being so much fun. I know from the responses we received from your performances, that we will be getting some very good reports sent to West Lake. I have a feeling there are going to be a lot more LAMB Caravans in the future. Thank you LAMB Caravan #3.
Mrs. Wooley
2011 SPRING CARAVAN ACTORS
Grace, Hillary, Josie
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Monday, May 16: Jamestown to Aberdeen to Elk Point to Sioux City
Monday morning, we woke up and had breakfast in our own suites. (How grownup was that?) We were scheduled to leave our beautiful suites in Jamestown at 8 a.m. and we left just moments after that so we would arrive when Aberdeen’s Wylie Park where Story Book Land and the Wizard of Oz Park opened. We arrived at the park about 11 minutes after 10 and there were already several school buses and nursery school buses there. It was such a great day for an outing and the park was plenty big enough for all of us. Hillary decided in the van that we should pretend that we had just crashed (plane) and that we landed in an odd part of the world and that we were going to be discovering it as we went along. We did that for about the first 10 or 15 minutes until we got to a spot where one of the park workers was planting flowers and she kept giving Hillary strange looks as Hillary was saying things like, "What a bizarre and strange place this is.....everything looks so strange and scary." Mrs. Wooley explained to the lady that we were a troupe of actors and that this is what we do for fun. We loved the park and stayed for about one hour and 45 minutes before leaving to go to Millstone Restaurant to meet with Aunt Phyllis and Grandma Hope. We ate lunch and laughed a lot. We were really hungry and we had a wonderful waitress who really liked us and even gave Hillary a second cup of cocoa with whipped cream. On the way out she told us good bye with our own names. (Good memory) We sang our World Famous "Road Kill" song for Aunt Phyllis and Grandma Hope before leaving Aberdeen. On the way home we stopped at Watertown for gas and our final leg of the journey was to Elk Point to visit Edgar's for ice cream. Mr. Wooley greeted us back at the theatre. We all decided that it was too short of a tour and that we would love to keep doing this show for more kids. We learned a lot and had a lot of fun.
Grace, Josie and Hillary
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Bismarck-Sunday, May 15, 2011 by Grace
Hello blog followers! This is Grace Beumler speaking. (Blogging) I am not as good at writing blogs as the previous Lamb Caravan-ers, but I will try my best. So here it goes.
Although our tour is not very long we have still had a lot of fun. Be prepared to not know what I'm talking about. Today, at 6:30 I woke up to the annoying sound of my phone alarm clock. After several tries of trying to wake up Hillary and Josie up, we were started our day. At around 8 we loaded into Dr. Mershmallow (our big white van) and looked for a place to eat. We picked McDonalds as our restaurant. When we got there we heard a man singing in the bathroom. He walked out and told me to smile. We decided that we should all try to be just as happy as he was. As soon as we had talked about our show yesterday, we were off.
At approximately 8:35 we got on the road headed for Bismarck. Singing many songs along with making up many more helped pass the time. One of Hillary's old songs, Smoothie-licious, made us all laugh. After pointing out buffalo and playing Brain Quest we started to get bored. So we decided to make up our own songs. We made up a song about 'road kill' and about all the flooding and an old man that we imagined swimming in the rain water. After a lot of laughing and bumping around on SD's pot-hole covered roads we finally reached North Dakota.
It was depressing to see all the flooding that happened in ND. After listening to Clidet Phyllis Mary Sue Betty Bob a.k.a George (our GPS) we arrived in Bismarck. We stopped at Taco John's and took a few pics of the Donut Hole (a restaurant across the way). Then we headed to the Simle Middle School to perform.
George got us lost and took us to a detention center so we had to recalculate. At 12:01 we arrived at the middle school. Penny (one of the people who helped to recruit Lamb Theater) and her family helped us set up. We ran through the show once before performing. By the end of the show we were pooped, but it was worth it. The kids LOVED it. They especially loved all the physical humor. There was one girl who laughed non-stop then after the show told us we were perfect. I got to see some of my family who lived in town and came to see the show. Mrs. Wooley said our show was great, and although we had a few hiccups, we had "covered our mouths."
We got into Dr. Meshmallow at 4:26 to go to Jamestown. We found out that there are NO billboards in North Dakota, so it's REALLY boring and there is nothing to look at. Finally we got to Jamestown and headed straight for Frontier Village. We wanted to see the world's largest buffalo but unfortunately the place was closing in 5 min. We could only take a couple pics and then we had to leave.
When we got to the Gladstone hotel we got into our room and it was frontier themed. Mrs. Wooley's room was safari themed and had a view of the pool. We went to pizza hut and had some pretty crazy conversations. We talked about the crazy kids behind us, Josie’s wings (which were really just chicken nuggets covered in sauce), that cheese pizza is the square root of all pizzas, and that ham comes from turkey's heads. We danced and did impressions and then headed to the store.
Going to the store with Hil and Josie was not the best idea. We all got lost and it took us forever. After checking out we decided to come back to the hotel to blog and swim. Sadly we couldn't go swimming due to the fact that someone puked in the pool. So we hung out in the room, ate salad and Oreos, and watched the Celebrity Apprentice and Cupcake Wars. Now we relax and hope for safe travels tomorrow.
Sally/King/Rumplstiltskin's Voice
Grace Beumler
(PS. Please excuse any spelling/grammar mistakes)
Although our tour is not very long we have still had a lot of fun. Be prepared to not know what I'm talking about. Today, at 6:30 I woke up to the annoying sound of my phone alarm clock. After several tries of trying to wake up Hillary and Josie up, we were started our day. At around 8 we loaded into Dr. Mershmallow (our big white van) and looked for a place to eat. We picked McDonalds as our restaurant. When we got there we heard a man singing in the bathroom. He walked out and told me to smile. We decided that we should all try to be just as happy as he was. As soon as we had talked about our show yesterday, we were off.
At approximately 8:35 we got on the road headed for Bismarck. Singing many songs along with making up many more helped pass the time. One of Hillary's old songs, Smoothie-licious, made us all laugh. After pointing out buffalo and playing Brain Quest we started to get bored. So we decided to make up our own songs. We made up a song about 'road kill' and about all the flooding and an old man that we imagined swimming in the rain water. After a lot of laughing and bumping around on SD's pot-hole covered roads we finally reached North Dakota.
It was depressing to see all the flooding that happened in ND. After listening to Clidet Phyllis Mary Sue Betty Bob a.k.a George (our GPS) we arrived in Bismarck. We stopped at Taco John's and took a few pics of the Donut Hole (a restaurant across the way). Then we headed to the Simle Middle School to perform.
George got us lost and took us to a detention center so we had to recalculate. At 12:01 we arrived at the middle school. Penny (one of the people who helped to recruit Lamb Theater) and her family helped us set up. We ran through the show once before performing. By the end of the show we were pooped, but it was worth it. The kids LOVED it. They especially loved all the physical humor. There was one girl who laughed non-stop then after the show told us we were perfect. I got to see some of my family who lived in town and came to see the show. Mrs. Wooley said our show was great, and although we had a few hiccups, we had "covered our mouths."
We got into Dr. Meshmallow at 4:26 to go to Jamestown. We found out that there are NO billboards in North Dakota, so it's REALLY boring and there is nothing to look at. Finally we got to Jamestown and headed straight for Frontier Village. We wanted to see the world's largest buffalo but unfortunately the place was closing in 5 min. We could only take a couple pics and then we had to leave.
When we got to the Gladstone hotel we got into our room and it was frontier themed. Mrs. Wooley's room was safari themed and had a view of the pool. We went to pizza hut and had some pretty crazy conversations. We talked about the crazy kids behind us, Josie’s wings (which were really just chicken nuggets covered in sauce), that cheese pizza is the square root of all pizzas, and that ham comes from turkey's heads. We danced and did impressions and then headed to the store.
Going to the store with Hil and Josie was not the best idea. We all got lost and it took us forever. After checking out we decided to come back to the hotel to blog and swim. Sadly we couldn't go swimming due to the fact that someone puked in the pool. So we hung out in the room, ate salad and Oreos, and watched the Celebrity Apprentice and Cupcake Wars. Now we relax and hope for safe travels tomorrow.
Sally/King/Rumplstiltskin's Voice
Grace Beumler
(PS. Please excuse any spelling/grammar mistakes)
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Aberdeen by Josie
Hello blog followers! This is Josie Kasik! I have never written a blog before so it might not be that good. Today was the first of our adventure on the Lamb Caravan! Well, the day started off early in the morning. We arrived at Lamb at 7 a.m. While driving in the car we played an interesting game of Brain Quest. Of course Grace, being the smartest one out of all of us,won! Did I forget to mention that Mrs. Wooley's mom came with us? Anyways the rest of the ride pretty much consisted of eating chocolate and sleeping. When we woke up we stopped at a rest area and that is where Grace realized that she was carsick. So we had to move Grandma Hope to the back and Grace to the front to prevent her from getting sick. Hillary and I had to sit in the very back for the rest of the ride while Grace fell asleep. I taught Hillary how to play chess...kinda!!
When we arrived in Aberdeen we stopped at Millstone to eat. The food was great and most of us ended up ordering breakfast instead of lunch. We had many interesting conversations. We arrived at our hotel at 2:01 on the nose and settled in. Surprising Hillary was actually tired and took a cat nap while Grace and I were on our nooks and computers. I was reading the 2010 blog to know what I was supposed to write! We left the hotel (after losing the keys to the van) and arrived at the Aberdeen Central High School around 3:30. Of course we had a little trouble finding the right door to go through. We learned many interesting things about each other during that time. One thing we realized was that Grace's hair always looks good even when she is running in the rain! We set up the show and got into costume. The show was really good and went off without a hitch. We performed in front of 550 people. Signing autographs was also very fun but it took forever!
We drove back to the hotel, but we had to stop and take pictures because that is something Mrs. Wooley really likes to do. We arrived at our hotel and ate at Minervas. Hillary ordered her favorite, buffalo wings.. We made her tell the waiter "Hillary Ping wants chicken wings" It was very funny. The dinner conversations were hilarious, most of the things that made us laugh were because of Hillary, of course!! Of course Hillary wanted to go swimming afterwards. Grace and I, not having as much energy as her stayed in our room and video chatted with Grace's little sister, Sarah. When Hillary came back upstairs I started to write this blog! Well that pretty much sums up the day Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!!!
Your new, old, or present friend,
Josie
When we arrived in Aberdeen we stopped at Millstone to eat. The food was great and most of us ended up ordering breakfast instead of lunch. We had many interesting conversations. We arrived at our hotel at 2:01 on the nose and settled in. Surprising Hillary was actually tired and took a cat nap while Grace and I were on our nooks and computers. I was reading the 2010 blog to know what I was supposed to write! We left the hotel (after losing the keys to the van) and arrived at the Aberdeen Central High School around 3:30. Of course we had a little trouble finding the right door to go through. We learned many interesting things about each other during that time. One thing we realized was that Grace's hair always looks good even when she is running in the rain! We set up the show and got into costume. The show was really good and went off without a hitch. We performed in front of 550 people. Signing autographs was also very fun but it took forever!
We drove back to the hotel, but we had to stop and take pictures because that is something Mrs. Wooley really likes to do. We arrived at our hotel and ate at Minervas. Hillary ordered her favorite, buffalo wings.. We made her tell the waiter "Hillary Ping wants chicken wings" It was very funny. The dinner conversations were hilarious, most of the things that made us laugh were because of Hillary, of course!! Of course Hillary wanted to go swimming afterwards. Grace and I, not having as much energy as her stayed in our room and video chatted with Grace's little sister, Sarah. When Hillary came back upstairs I started to write this blog! Well that pretty much sums up the day Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!!!
Your new, old, or present friend,
Josie
Friday, May 13, 2011
'twas the night before......Caravan and all through the Theatre
So...our bags are packed. We're ready to go. We're standing here outside the door. We hate to wake you up to say "goodbye".....We're leaving on The Caravan.....Don't know when we'll be back again....Oh...babe...we hate to go..... (apologies to John Denver....and the kids say "WHO?)
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Getting Closer!
Tomorrow is our final rehearsal for the big weekend and everyone is getting excited. What an adventure we will be having in just a few days. Reed Saunders from 2009 and 2010 tours has offered his veteran insight as well as Grace Rants from 2010. On Thursday, May 12 the Caravan is presenting two public performances one at 4:15 P.M. and the other at 5:30 P.M. as we know that things will change once we are in front of an audience. The presentations will be in THE BOX Theatre which only seats 35 people, so it will be much, much, much more intimate than the venues we will be playing in Aberdeen and Bismarck. We are discovering that putting the set together is presenting some challenges as we are all vertically challenged.
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