George Washington, Part II

trieityherald .eorn
Play review: 'George Washington' takes patience, but it"sworth
the wait
The Richland Players' production of George Washington Slept Here gets off to a slow start but turns into a nearly new play at
the half. It's like the coach threw in new plays to jumpstart the second half. Of course, in theater talk, it's directors and
intermissions. And directors don't change the play at intermission, the authors do.
Moss Hart and George Kaufman wrote George in the 1940s. The script adapted well to director Tim Harris' timely updating. It
doesn't feel like a 1940s play, so he did a good job. The timely inserts are funny.
George Washington Slept Here is a comical look at following your dream versus acting responsibly. It's about going outside
the box, crossing your fingers only to find out you've jumped into the fire. City dwellers Annabelle and Newton Fuller, played by
Joyce Bean and Jack Carter, find themselves with a rundown house in the country with a questionable historical value. The
costs to improve the home are never-ending as is the wear on the Fuller family.
But the first act is short on laughs and long on the tedium of the home repairs. The second and third acts improve with the
addition of new characters. Not that the talents of Joyce Bean and Jack Carter can't carry a play themselves, there simply isn't
much to the material until the second and third acts. The liveliness factor moves into high gear and the laughs are closer
together.
June Gillespie is hilarious as a local community theater actor -- is that life imitating art or vice versa? Dick Gordon as Uncle
Stanley -- there are sb many solid actors in this production.
The Players should be happy with the full theater and the audience should be happy with the recently renovated entrance,
lobby and restrooms. George is a well-liked and popular play, not particularly controversial. The set transforms nicely along
with the story. If you can hold out for the later acts, it's worth your time.

President Hinckley" passing

I found it rather sad in one way for President Hinckley's passing, and in another way grateful for his relief. (From the separation of Marjorie, not work; I'm sure he is still at it.)  I thought of many experiences I enjoyed.  But one especially struck my fancy from the opening hymn we sang this morning at Jared and Becky's Ward, Benjamin's blessing.  I remember referring to this situation in one of the very few letters I wrote Eric on his mission.  But during the dedication of the Columbia River Temple, Our President was laying the cornerstone and afterwards stepped back into the temple,  A Young Adult Choir was singing some hymn and when President Hinckley passed by to reenter the temple they started to sing, "We Ever Pray For Thee," our opening hymn this morning.  President Hinckley stopped.  An act that touched me.  Our Prophet was letting us honor him through those young peoples harmonizing, and rather than continue and pass it off, he let us honor him.  I once mentioned this to our High Priest Group Leader who was part of the planning committee for the dedication.  He said that that number was not on the original schedule, but the singing of that song was added just before the ceremony.  I also mentioned the situation during a Sunday School class, and one of the participants said, and I quote, "Maybe the Dude liked the song."  I'm sure he does, but so much more does it mean to me that he was letting all who participated to honor "Our Prophet Dear."

George Washington Slept Here

Well here it is the end of another play. We opened January 11, somewhat postponed from the originally scheduled September 19. The Richland Players Theater was closed for remodeling, which persisted beyond expectations, and we were postponed. Our schedule began opposite the College's opening of Hamlet, and Academy of Children's Theater Production of Peter Pan. Our first night was about three-fourths of the auditorium full, unusual for the opening night. But Saturday, the next Friday, and the next Saturday were all sold out. Sunday matinee was also a sell-out as well as the closing weekend. But weather conditions decreased actual attendance on the matinee and the final Saturday performance. The biggest surprise to me was the ability I had to memorize all the dialogue I had. I shared the lead with a female playing, naturally, my wife. My character was an excited character that wanted to leave the city life of NY to live in a house in Pennsylvania that rumored to be a place that George Washington had slept, while the female lead was less excited. (One line from the play: "Angry? I Could spit all the way to Arlington.") A film in 1940 starred Jack Benny, which I was watching once with Jared. He asked me which part I played, some I should think would assume the Jack Benny part. Unfortunately the roles are reversed from the play and my answer to Jared had to be, "Hers." My female lead had a lot of dialogue to memorize, too. And both of us aren't young, either. I reflected how memorizing all the lines from God's Favorite was easier when I was 13 years younger, and I also had an assistant to help me go over lines when we were less busy, and the four hour trip to Othello each weekend. Anyway, it happened, unfortunately without 100% perfection. The dialogue itself was so often almost repetitive, but not an exact repeat just a close one. But I will admit, the completed task was fun.

A picture in the paper was printed for Friday's opening night. I was in the foreground with the female lead to my left, being angry, and three other cast members looking on. Sunday's bishopric meeting brought some discussions from our Bishop of the picture. I was recently called as an Assistant Executive Secretary, thus part of the bishopric. Our Bishop says that my purpose as an Assistant Exec is to make him look good. He is bald, but not quite as bald as I, so I think that is what he meant. But what made this Bishopric Meeting so memorable was the Bishop commenting on the picture to his family that "Bro. Carter is letting his hair down."

The review of the play wasn't technically printed in the paper. But was obtainable on the internet. (I had intentions of posting the review on the blog, alongside the picture, but am having troubles getting the picture. I will do it later if I can.)
The reviewer's biggest comments were the slowness of the first act, but aferwards the rest was worth the wait. The only comment about performances were of two supporting players who she thought shined, and that we leads could carry the play by ourselves.

One particular part in the play involved my abilities to act as if I were getting involved with a group of drinking adults. I was joined in this group by another LDS actor. Molly and Emily joined their parents to see it, and I wondered what they remembered of the play. The first scene ended with a lot of soot from an old fireplace all over my face and sitting on a chair with a broken leg that naturally crashed. I thought that is what they would remember, but, no, Emily remembers my "acting drunk while talking to the (female lead)."

Well, another memory to add to the many, which sometimes seem to be fading. I will probably be in another one, I'm just not sure when.

Super bowl

Grandma is going for the Patriots!!!!!Who is with me? Do we want a bet?????

Trip to East Coast

Molly and Emily we wanted to show you the following stuff:

• The zoo, it is really cool, they have hippos, Pandas and they are funny. (Kayla said one scratches their butt in the bathtube).
• Abraham Lincoln's Memorial, it is really cool and I like Abraham Lincoln. I think you will like it to.
• Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln got shot, and the doctor's office across the street where he died. It is really neat.
• The Air & Space Museum: Planes, space stuff, Ruby slippers from Wizard of Oz, R2-D2 & C3PO, as well as a piece of the Nauvoo Temple.

These are things I thought you guys would like. We are all excited for you to come here.

Reply to Questions from Tyler and Zach, From Uncle Jared

I am not that much into Marvel Comics, except for Gambit. But I will share what I do know. Venom was an alien that took over a human, and after a while he "spawned", that is part of Venom broke away and joined with someone else and created Carnage. So you could call Carnage Venom's son. Sorry, that is all that I know.
Jared

Hey guys

Long time since I blogged. Things going well, I will give a bigger entry tomorrow. Love you guys!

Uncle Jared: Zach and Tyler were curious about who Carnage is and what is his story.

Christmas memories

Here is my favorite new Christmas tradition (which is a very good thing, because Eric and I are still just not totally agreed on how Christmas should be had. So any great tradition that can be created that we both love is a positive thing!!)

Christmas carols on Christmas Eve. It was the best. I wish the footage was longer.

And here is my favorite picture of these two cute cousins. Notice their "matching" shirts that their fabulous Uncle Ron personally picked out for them at Disneyland.

And look at this little boy--Christmas morning excitement has not left him with age!

As for any other pics, we were having too much fun to remember to drag out the camera! The one thing that we really missed, and could have made this the best Christmas yet would have been to have Nick and Jen and Tyler and Zach and McKayla and Brayden there. We missed you guys!

Happy Birthday Benjamin

Benjamin Nathaniel Carter was born at 3:42 pm on December 29, 2007. He weighed 10 pounds even and was 20 1/2 inches long. We are all doing great. We are so happy that Benjamin is here and healthy.

We had a fun New Year's eve at home. We stayed home and played games and watched a movie. Timothy didn't make it until midnight, but the girls did. We ate popcorn out of our new bowls. It was great. Hope you are all having a great new year.

Hey everyone,

We had a great Christmas this year. Thank you everyone for the wonderful gifts. We are excited to use the popcorn bowls. Hope you guys had a good Christmas as well. Your gifts should be there soon. Becky is going to be induced on Saturday. Hopefully we will have a new baby soon.

Jared, Becky, Molly, Emily, Tim, and Baby

APOLOGY

Sorry guys! It's too good! You'll have to scratch Bourne Ultimatum off of our wish list. We were buying Harry and High School Musical 2 and couldn't help it. So, sorry
-Eric

Happy BDay Viana

Wishing you a happy birthday: For the proper B-day wish, only a daughter of Eric would appreciate "Movie Quotes"

"If anybody asks we were busting mailboxes!"

"It gets painted!"

"You can be the toy that comes with the meal."

"We drew one of you dying because our teacher said it would be more dramatic."

"You were the one getting all fancy with the spices."

Christmas Questions

It is not really drawing names, but we would rotate families each year. That is this year we would buy for Nick and Jen, Nick and Jen would buy for Eric and CJ and Eric and CJ would buy for Ron. Then Ron would buy for us. We thought that this would allow us to get better gifts for everyone. But we will also go with that you guys want. Jared

Zach, I would have to say that I think Marvel has more heros, because of their whole "mutant" problem, developing people with abilities. They have several different Xmen comics and sometimes characters only show up once. That is my assumption. Although I do prefer DC.

Our Movie List and other random thoughts of nothingness

Basically we don't buy movies. The two newer movies we have are Ratatouille and the new Barbie movie. And guess what they came from Grandma. Thanks for your list Paco! Jared you can see the response in the commentsof yours.

Zach says:

Uncle Jared, Which has more super heroes Marvel or DC?

By the way Jared, my three boys are crazy for comic superhero guys and stuff, and I have said that you were the extreme authority in the family on the subject, so they may have a lot of questions for you.

Oh yeah, Thanksgiving was good. I had a Motions hearing today and got robbed by a judge who found against me without even telling me why. Oh that makes me mad. Because I am wrong a lot, but I at leat would like to know why I'm wrong.

Anyway, thanks for the blogging guys.

Jack Bauer Quote: "You are never going to get the bad guys without taking a few risks...now get me a hachsaw." Love it, new season starts in January.

Christmas Questions

We were wondering about how we are doing gifts this year. Are we still buying for everybody or are we wanting to start only buying for one family per year? Let us know your ideas. Thanks Jared.

After Thanksgiving!

Well, first of all I hope that all had a wonderful Holiday! We missed you all and thought of you over the break. We had a great time here in Utah with CJ's family! Now that Thanksgiving is over we now can focus on Christmas. We got a new Christmas tree, doubling the size of our former one. (We went from a 3ft to a 6ft). Anyways, the point of this entry is to encourage each of us to post what movies we already have (recently released movies, that is. I don't think we need Jared and Becky's comprehensive list--:) ), and maybe list some that we wouldn't mind (not saying that a present has to be that, or even a movie at all; I've just noticed that that is often a common theme.) So we'll start, but I also would love to see lists from Jared/Becky and fam, Nick/Jenny and fam, Mom/Dad and Grandpa Glen, and our brother Ron!

Already have, or will have (so you wouldn't need to get these)
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Spiderman 3
Meet the Robinsons
Santa Clause 3
Ratatouille
Pixar Shorts Vol. 1
High School Musical 2
Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End
Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix

Don't have yet, and won't be buying (so if you wanted, these are possibilities)
Peter Pan in Return to Neverland "Pixie Powered Edition"
Shrek the Third
Live Free or Die Hard
Cinderella II "Special Edition"
Walt Disney Treasures: Disneyland Stories, Secrets and Magic
Stardust
Bourne Ultimatum

I think that this will be valuable for us to know about you guys; kind of the reason why we did it. So I hope to see lists from all of you as well. And if you don't know what will be out it's easy to search Disney DVD releases on Google and you can see there what will be available (or other non-Disney movies too can be found by searching DVD releases...). Our list is actually comprised solely of new releases, but if there are some others that you've been dying to have, go ahead and put them on your wishlist.
Thanks
-Eric

So we got the movie Spiderman 3 and this mask came with it. We thought it was funny having Superman pajamas and a Spiderman mask. Jared wanted to try it on, but it was too small:) We are all doing great and hope that everyone else is too.

Here are the pictures from Halloween. I finally was able to get them posted. Unfortunately you don't get to see Emily and Timothy with make-up on. Emily had princess make-up with glitter and Tim had curly mustache, pointed beard and bushy eyebrows. It was super cute.

Halloween

Hi all,

We are finally getting our Halloween pictures posted. We had a fun Halloween. Molly was a corpse bride, Emily was Aurora, and Tim was a pirate. Jared was Obi Wan Kenobi. I was the great pumpkin (at least that is how I feel). Anyway, we went to downtown Ellensburg and went trick or treating at the shops. Papa Murphy's was giving out free personal size pizzas to the kids. It was cool. We also went the the stake trunk or treat. It went from exactly 6:00 to 6:30. We had to be out of the parking lot by 6:40 so that the youth could come and have their dance. Then we went to about a blocks worth of trick or treating to houses on the hill and the kids were done. It was cold. We then went to a pizza party at a friends house. After that we went to another party at another friends house. It was a full night, but we had fun. The kids have waaaaay to much candy. Tim would eat it non-stop if we would let him. Anyway, here are some of the pictures from Halloween and also some of us carving pumpkins.

Tyler, what is going on in level two of Jedi Knight? What part are you struggling with. Our disk got stepped on and broken so we can't look it up.

We hope that everyone is doing great. Have a great day.

Jared, Becky, Molly, Emily, and Tim

The pictures are not uploading right now, so we will try later.


The kids say Hi to everyone:)

Halloween Pictures

HEY GUYS, HERE IS THE LOW DOWN. LIFE IS GOOD, STILL AWAITING TO MOVE, WHO KNOWS WHEN, BUT WE SAW OUR FRIENDS HOUSE AND IT IS A NICE PLACE SO IT WILL GOOD TO EVENTUALLY GET IN.

HERE ARE THE HALLOWEEN PICTURES.

MCKAYLA WAS SNOW WHITE, SHE LOVED THE DRESS AND THE SHOES, UNFORTUNATELY WE DIDN'T GET ANY PHOTO CLOSE UPS OF THE SHOES.

ZACH WENT AS SPIDERMAN:
TYLER WENT AS VENOM
BRAYDEN AS HARRY POTTER. IT WAS REALLY HIS IDEA, NOT MINE.

LOVE YOU GUYS HOPE ALL IS WELL.