Lights!

The CTK Cabaret Night has come and gone, and seeing as though I have been involved in every single one so far, I feel qualified to say that this really was the best one. We had more truly talented acts than ever before. This was the first time that there wasn't a weak person or number in the whole thing (those of you who were there know that I am choosing to ignore one performance). Everyone did such a great job! I was so proud of all of my very talented friends. Of course without talented people it couldn't happen, but what really made the show was the lights! Big kudos to Bob for sticking to his guns and getting us lighting. It made all the difference in the world. If you don't believe me, check out the pics:

Charlie Brown (Don), Linus (Mark) and Lucy (Debbie) singing to Fr. Bill about Little Known Facts.

I love the beams of light in this one. Luckily I caught a few like this.

Mark's haunting Sunset Boulevard.

Gina striking her All That Jazz pose.

I like the framing of this pic too. I'm a goof.

Debbie, Mark and me singing The I Love You Song from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I was so proud of us on this one. It felt so magical.

Mark and me doing our Jesus Christ Superstar duet.

That was very flattering lighting. :)

Crystal during I Still Believe from Miss Saigon.

Crystal and Laura. They did a great job on a beautiful and haunting song. (Haunting is my new favorite adjective. Must be Halloween!)

Great job on this one, Janell! Don and me doing our Spamalot schtick with The Song That Goes Like This. Don did so well. :)

Mary cracked everyone up with I'm Not That Smart also from Spelling Bee. What a ham!

Speaking of hams... Josh, Mark, Cole and Don (obviously not pictured) offering what Mama Says. That was also quite funny and another great performance.

Cathy and Gina doing Ease on Down the Road from The Wiz.

Divas

and more divas!

Don's and my fan club.

I have soooooo many more pictures than this, but these are a few of my favorites. I think I had as much fun playing around with my camera as I did on stage! It was a great and fun evening that I was proud to have been a part.

Great Cause!

I'm not going to get in the habit of plugging my own stuff, but I can't resist this time because I am so proud of the kids! (This wasn't even my idea... it was Debbie's.) What you are looking at is our Jr. High Youth Ministry Youth Can. The kids decorated it themselves this week during class. The bags are just a few of what the kids decorated to donate to the women at ShadeTree. They are stuffed with items that women would need to go out job hunting and interviewing. The flour and sugar represent the breast cancer awareness cookies we will be baking and decorating next week for all the women in the parish.

Back to the can: it does have a "real" purpose. We will be conducting many drives throughout the year to benefit different causes in our parish, local and national communities. Whenever we need something from the parish we will publish the list in the bulletin and the next week those items can be placed in our Youth Can before or after Mass in the Gathering Space. Pretty cool, hu? I really hope that the response from the parish is good. It will be really nice for the kids to feel that much support for what they are doing. There will be some kind of promo about this at all the Masses in a few weeks. It may be a video. It may be Debbie and me talking. It depends on how good the video the kids made turned out. I have yet to watch the footage. I hope it's good, because I don't want to let the kids down by not using it. So, we'll see... If you attend CTK please help us out when we need it and if you don't attend CTK you can still help because you know me and I'm in the middle of it all!

The Youth Can is a great thing!