The week of Thanksgiving, we packed the car with an unnecessary amount of bags and suitcases and headed south for the week. On the day we arrived in Florida, our old home in NY got 6 feet of snow. Instead of sledding and throwing snowballs, AB was frolicking in the sea. The water was very rough and at one point I had to grab onto her head so she didn’t float away, but she had the time of her life.

We spend the afternoon with Grandma Connie. She is hysterical and a jewelry inspiration, two things I look for in a friend. She’s never wearing less than eight pieces of jewelry at a time. She jangles as she walks. She’s really kept up with the technological times. She texts, has a facebook account, an Alexa in the bedroom and a Bixby in the living room. She did say her son “took a moving picture” when telling us about a video he took so some old habits die hard.

After Grandma’s, we drove to Universal Studios and Harry Potter World. Annabelle was equally excited to see her cousins as she was to see Harry’s world. She adores them.

Several years ago I had star small roles in a Christmas Carol musical. Aaron was Scrooge and Elizabeth was two other big roles. It was actually a very big production that took months of preparation. It was during that show that I started my illustrious career as a stage manager. Last weekend, Sesame was in The Christmas Carol as a townsperson and an errand girl. It was a very full-circle moment.I put makeup on her for the show and she looked too grown up. At the same time, I was very proud of how good her eyelashes looked with mascara.

I used my fancy Seint makeup on her and put the palette in her bag in case one of the backstage moms needed to touch it up. When I was going through her bag later, the makeup had little fingerholes poked in it. No more fancee makeup for her! Drugstore makeup is where it’s at for her stage career.