Applause! Applause! (Day 3)

This weekend I was blessed to have been able to drive down to Milroy and meet up with Mandy there and bring two of the lights of my life back home here with me. In the process, we also switched cars and I brought her car up here, while she took mine back to Middletown then.

The reason for the car switcheroo was so that Mandy's ex-husband (who is an auto mechanic) had found a set of tires that would fit her car and he got them by his normal methods of wheeling and dealing, trading this or that -as mechanics often do -so the tires then were ultra cheap for her plus he said he would put them on her car for her too as long as she got the car up here from Middletown.

And it was, as it always is, really great to have the grandkids here over the weekend. (Even though they do tend to squabble a good bit and there were some reprimands about one using excessive force on the other, overall things were fairly smooth.)

Saturday evening though, there was an event scheduled to take place in nearby Philipsburg -a fund raiser for the Front and Centre Theatre Company of Philipsburg. (This is the name of the group that Maya has been part of for the past 2-3 years now and she has been in several of the plays the group has done during that time span.) The group -F&CTC -is currently trying to find a location in Philipsburg that they can call their "home" -where the kids can congregate, practice and other activities pertaining to the production of plays in the future will take place.  

They even have a name picked out for this future "home" and it will be called "Pappy Jack's Place."

There is a little story behind that name for their future home though. It's really going to be called, officially, The Jack Weaver Memorial Center, but the nickname will be Pappy Jack's Place. And Pappy Jack was what the kids and staff all called the man who donated of his time and talents, over and over again, to build sets for the various plays, to help with costuming, to encourage the children who have been part of these plays as well as financial donations he and his wife frequently made to the group too. Pappy Jack just happened to be married to my cousin, Margaret Anne, so you see, he was related to me by marriage and Pappy Jack also passed away this summer, leaving a huge void not just within our family but also within the theatre company family as well.

So anyway, the fund raiser last night was called a "Ghost Walk" and what it amounted to was the theatre company researched various buildings and businesses that had once been a major part of Philipsburg and learned that several -actually many -of the locations where some of these businesses and buildings had been are reputed to being haunted today by ghosts!

I thought that perhaps the kids were both old enough that they could understand a good bit of the stories that would be shared with people taking a Ghost Walk Tour so I took Maya and Kurt and away we went then for this event.

I did get a few pictures along the walk of a couple of our stops, including one attempt at a video. Unfortunately, I didn't get the video clicked on at the very beginning of the soloist's performance and only caught, as a result, about 26 seconds of the song. However, the young man (he's only 15 years old) who did this song always impresses me with his talent as he does have a beautiful voice so I am going to post that little video I did get on here and you can hear him and judge for yourself how great a job he is capable of doing! So I give you Bennett Salter and his solo performance at the Ghost Walk in Philipsburg, PA on November 2, 2013.

 And that brings me to this being my Day 3 of Thankful postings.

Today, I am thankful for Front and Centre Theatre Company of Philipsburg, PA, for the guidance this group has provided to so many kids from this region, opportunities to learn, to gain self-confidence and perform before an audience, showing the kids how to do dance routines that would be very complicated for me to learn but somehow, they manage to get these kids to pick the steps and the process all up and it comes out great!

I'm thankful especially that Maya has had this opportunity afforded to her and the family has been amazed at how well she has done in the parts she's had now in at least 3 or 4 plays, possibly more -can't remember all of them offhand right now!

And I am also very thankful to see how appreciative this group has been of my cousin, Jack Weaver, and his work and contributions to the production of these plays. That they are naming their proposed center after him is a great memorial to Jack and a wonderful honor to his wife, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren -as well as a whole lot of cousins too!

This group and the efforts of the staff, the kids and all the volunteers too who work long and hard on the sidelines to get these productions to come about and then, come to life on the stage deserves every bit of recognition possible and I'm thankful to have the opportunity to share this here with anyone and everyone I can!