Speaking of which, I am kind of excited about. January will be the killer month, when cold hard reality sets in and I realize I have no job and no show. But until then, I am going to revel in the holidays and I am super excited to see everyone I haven't seen in three months and to go home for a couple weeks. I wish I could go back East to see everyone for a while and then come back out here and tour in January! But alas...
We had an extraordinary week - we were pampered a lot by Maxine and Wayne, who are the lovely parents of Jodee, who works for MSIP. They often have the cast over for dinner every tour, but we got extra lucky because they invited us over two nights in a row! Their house is beautiful - it is right outside St. Ignatius, MT - and they had they whole place decked out for Christmas. The first night, they served us a delicious pot roast with squash and even rhubarb pie! The second night, they made us an amazing chili with cornbread ( I think I ate 3 pieces) and I just ate cornbread with chokecherry preserves on top for dessert. I told them how much we all appreciated being in a home with decorations and music as opposed to a hotel room. Maxine seemed kind of shocked - she thought we would want some sort of entertainment when we came over, but we were all very content to sit in the living room and just listen to music and stare out the window or at the tree. I think it reminded everyone of being at their house for Christmas - and some of my cast mates haven't been home for 6 months because of the summer tour.
Looking at my time out here as a whole, I only have two regrets: one, I didn't ride a horse like I wanted to and two, I forgot my Elvis Christmas CD in Chicago.