The Big Event. . . Day 2, Tuesday, Load In

One of the hardest things about this event was the early mornings. It's not like we had to get up before 8 a.m. or anything but it's a challenge for 3/4's of my family to be up and functional before 10 a.m. Gloria loves to be at The Egyptian, however, so she drug herself out of bed everyday of the week in order to be in on all the action. She still wasn't really functional before noon though:

Tuesday was load-in day so all of this stuff. . .


. . . had to be loaded into the truck. . .


. . . so it could be loaded into The Egyptian:

This is my Ramsa monitor board:

It's heavy and a pain to haul around but I learned how to run monitors on it so it has a special place in my heart. The guys aren't quite so attached to it since it almost breaks their backs every time we use it. . .

I refuse to run monitors for shows like this for obvious reasons so this was Kurt's little corner for the remainder of the week:

When Rob and Kurt worked on the sound system in the theater a couple of months ago, they made it very possible and very easy for us to tie in to the house system. Less speakers for us to load, unload and hook up. These are already in place so no Genie lifts were required. . .

After everything was loaded into the theater, it was time to set things up. Kurt ran the socapex lighting cables up over the wall and into the balcony for the lighting guys:

This is the view from the balcony down onto the stage that we set up on Monday:

The lighting crew and the television crew loaded in about the same time we did so there were quite a few different things going on. It was interesting to watch and to see everyone working together to get this done:

By early evening, everything was hooked up and working the way it was supposed to. Gloria helped us do a line check on all of the mic channels and then had the stage to herself to sing to her imaginary audience:

Two days down, four to go. . .

The Big Event. . . Day 1, Monday, Stage Set-Up

I know I've said it before, but last week's event really was our biggest event EVER so far. I don't mean big as in audience numbers, venue size or big "names" but BIG as in I-can't-believe-we-get-to-be-a-part-of-something-like-this BIG. Click HERE to get the basic information and then I'll do my best to describe, with words and pictures, how it felt to really be there over the next few days.


This show has been in the works for a very long time and we committed to it back in the fall sometime. We have worked with Kevin Kirk several times in the past and it's always been a positive experience. It's hard to describe the music of Onomatopoeia but it's kind of similar to Mannheim Steamroller. Anyway, the guys started prepping for the show a couple of weeks ago by making piles and piles of custom cables that were needed to connect our system to the audio/video equipment that were used in this television broadcast production. Did I mention this is HUGE???

We had also agreed to custom build extensions onto the stage at the Egyptian in order to accommodate this 7 piece band and 8 piece string orchestra. Rob and Kurt built and painted stage decks the week before and left them to dry in the aisles of the theater over the weekend.


Monday was stage installation day!

The existing stage at the theater also received a new paint job and needed to be completely leveled before we could add on the second layer of stage decks.

It was a pretty big job considering each of the additional stage decks had to be individually leveled with custom-sized legs added on site.

Each deck then had to be shimmed and clamped:

Clamping is never a fun job but someone has to do it.

Gloria loves to be at The Egyptian so she didn't complain much at all about doing her schoolwork on the stage all week. . .

The back row of stage decks was the most difficult to clamp. Because of the layering in the theater, the space under the back row was only about 6 inches so no one but Gloria could slide underneath and she couldn't handle a clamp once she squeezed under. The guys still managed to clamp them all, they just had to be creative:

At the end of the day, the stage was ready for our Tuesday load-in and looked great. Kevin came by and said it was exactly what he was hoping for. One day down, five more to go. . .

Quiz Meet #3

The quiz meet last weekend was a blast!! I took over 300 pictures but narrowed it down to about 120 for the blog. We've had a very busy week getting ready for one of our biggest shows EVER at The Egyptian so I can't say as much as I'd like about the quiz meet so, in the interest of time, I've decided to list the highlights and let the pictures speak for themselves!!

• Zach and Andrew took 2nd and 3rd respectivly by quizzing out every single round and the team placed 5th out of 15 teams. I was so proud!!!



• Stephanie memorized 3 verses and jumped quick enough to answer a verse question perfectly! Go Stephy!!


• Zach "survived" the memory verse-off (it was an 8-way tie!).
  
• We stayed with the McConaughey's in their "new" house in Newberg. It's a great old house with lots of rooms and personality. It was wonderful to see them even though we didn't have anywhere near enough time to catch up.

• We took a walking tour of the George Fox campus and the Yearly Meeting Office where Shawn works. I love that they can walk just about any where they need to go.



• We played Settlers of Catan two times, once with the Koskelas!! A huge highlight for me.



• Even though the weather wasn't great either way, we made it there and back without any problems. We had thick fog over the blues on the way there and very snowy/icey conditions on the way home but we stayed safe. We saw several accidents including an SUV on it's side in Portland and a jack-knifed semi but other than that travel was pretty uneventful.
  
• I think I took some decent scenery photos considering I was in a moving vehicle. It's such a pretty drive and I think a captured a little bit of that.


• All in all it was a great trip. I had a lot of fun with my team and enjoyed catching up with good friends!
  

Road Trip to Newberg:

Thick fog over the Blue Mountains:

Zach's sketch of Andrew:

Zach's sketch of Stephanie:

Jered leapt over the fence and ran out to meet us:

Shawn's office:

George Fox University Campus:

Dinner out with the McConaughey's. Thanks, Shawn and Katrina!!

Back at the house for games:

The Quiz Meet!!!:

The Verse Off:

Afternoon rounds of quizzing:

My Team!!:

My Girls!!!:

The last round of the day was against the Newberg team. Gregg took this next set of pictures for me:

It was very, very close but the Newberg team won the afternoon round and the Boise team won the morning round:


I love all of the expressions in this picture:

Dinner:

The activity: A Mall Scavenger Hunt!






Awards:

The computer was down at the last meet so the first awards that were given were from December. Zach took 5th place and Andrew placed third!!



Andrew placed third again for this meet and was very proud of his two white ribbons!!

Zach with his 2nd place ribbon, his verse-off surviver certificate and his fifth place ribbon from the last meet:

End of a long day. . . .

One more game of Catan. . .

The first of many accidents we saw on the way home:

Portland:

Road Trip Home!!:

It took me all week to get this posted! Meanwhile, we experienced one of our biggest events ever. . . The main show is Friday night but I've already taken about 300 pictures of the set up and dress rehersal. . . It's been quite a week.