Time to Celebrate...Almost

Yep, that is what I was drinking at about 1:00pm today - after I got back from dropping off our guest, Jace Vek, at the airport and getting home and realizing that my concert season was finally over. Well, sort of. I still have one more concert this coming Sunday night, but it's not a "Jennifer Thomas" concert, thank goodness. Anyway, sorry Will, I wanted to wait for you to get home from work to share in the apple cidar, but I had to celebrate. I'll save some for when you get home tonight. :)

The view from the hilltop near my parents' home on Camano Island

After a good night's rest, Jace, Will, and I headed up to Arlington so I could rehearse for the Christmas concert (on the 16th), and then we headed up to my parents' home afterwards to have lunch. My mom made a delicous meal of chicken salad and croissant sandwiches. And then she made Jace play for his food afterwards (see below).


We then headed back to our home in Fall City to prepare for that evening's concert. Fortunately, our landlords let us have full access to their home while they were in Palm Springs, so we had two grand pianos to practice on (mine and their's) - which was nice. Neither Jace or I had to fight over practice time.

Then about 5:30pm, we headed for downtown Seattle so we could get to the recital hall early enough to set up/warm up. My friend, Ali, filmed the concert in HD and so he was also there early getting his loads of camera equipment set up (he is editing the footage right now, and I'll post it later once I get it back from him).

I asked my dad (a.k.a. Mr. Photography nut) to take some pictures at the concert. He loves his camera, and so he happily showed up with his huge bag of camera equipment too, along with a lense that was about the size of a dinner plate (he said it filmed darker spaces well).

The funny part about all of this was that Benaroya Hall made me sign an agreement saying that any filming/photography was for personal use only. By the time my two "camera guys" showed up, I had to go up to the lady working that evening and explain that even though they looked like professionals, they weren't. LOL. She was just kind of like, "Uh uh.....riiiiight."

Here are some of my dad's photos from the concert...




The concert went really well. I have to admit, I was very nervous for this one. To perform with Jace Vek was a great honor and acheivement for me. It was just 2 and 1/2 years ago that I ran acrossed his music and became a "fan". I never dreamed that I would one day get to perform with this Emmy award winning musician. For him to adore my music as much as I his, is so awesome.

So then...I fessed up to Jace and told him I was nervous to perform with him. And he admitted that he too was nervous to perform with me. He heard me practicing Friday night and he said the first thing he thought was, "Dang, she definitely doesn't suck." LOL "Not that I thought you would suck AT ALL!, but you made me nervous, and that doesn't usually happen!" Haha. So after he told me he considered me on equal ground as him, and vice versa, we got rid of the whole "nervous to play in a concert together" thing and just had fun.

After the concert, we talked a lot with the audience, signed autographs and then finally left Benaroya around 10:30pm. We were all starving! Considering that due to nerves, I can't eat before a performance (and found out Jace is the same way), we were definitely ready for some food. So we headed over to Alki Beach and got some burgers at Duke's.

Except, okay pregnancy confession: I will no longer wear control-top pantyhose for 4 hours at a time. After finally getting tired of my baby-belly getting cinched in for hours, I went into the restaurant restroom and took off the nylons. And then the weirdest thing happened - my stomach cramped up (my stomach stomach, not the baby belly part), so bad that I couldn't even eat my salmon burger (which I was majorly sad about), and I was feeling so sick we had to leave. So, sorry Jace and Will. I completely attribute it to the pantyhose. And the few sips of sugarless lemonaide Will ordered and the sourdough bread on an empty stomach. Weird.

Sunday, Will and I got up and went to church in the snow. Yes, that's right: THE SNOW! I was so excited. During sacrament meeting, I kept looking out the double doors to see how much more snow had accumulated. But sadly, it all melted within a couple of hours.

We took Jace to Snoqualmie Falls, which was cool for him. The highest mountains in Pennsylvania are only 3,000 ft, so he was completely blown away by the mountains around here. He couldn't believe that Mt. Rainier was so big and still 50 miles away. He said "You can't see anything in PA from 50 miles away!"

And then we took a ride on the Seattle Ferry, to finish off our little "tour of the NW" for Jace. He had never been to the state of WA before, so we wanted to make sure he saw a little of everything.

A blurry view of Seattle from the ferry

I feel so relieved to have my concert season overwith, aside from this last one next Sunday. I dropped off Jace at the airport today and came home, turned on the Christmas music, caught up on some emails, blogs, etc. and just relaxed. It was nice.

Jace invited Will and I (and baby) to come out to PA next fall to do another concert with him. He assured me that the people there would love my music. He is perhaps going to get a rather large concert hall there called the "State Theater". I don't know if we could fill that many seats, but it would be a lot of fun. Anyway, so that was our weekend. I'm looking forward to a semi-relaxing week. Later!

P.S. I also just want to publicy thank Will for all he has done for me. I don't even know where to begin. From the little things like carrying my music for me, taking tickets, driving me around, calling people, helping me with my website updates, etc...to the big HUGE things like the fact that he has put his own real estate ventures aside so that I could have a season of success with my music. That has meant so much to me that I cannot even begin to express it. We are a one income family now (aside from the smidgen I make from my music) and he has sacrificed so much so that I can stay home to both work on my music and be a mom. I love you Will, so so so much. Thank you for EVERYTHING.