Rhode Island Comic Con

The kids, my friend Ron, and I went to Rhode Island Comic Con today. It's become a yearly tradition, and every year we get our picture taken with various celebrities. This year was no different, and we got to meet actors we hadn't met before.

Billy Boyd played Pippin in the Lord of the Rings series. We brought some of our Lord of the Rings mystery minis with us - specifically the four hobbits: Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin. Billy is holding the little Pippin figure, and he looks ecstatic to be doing so. It was so cute!

Tom Felton played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series. I handed him Lucius Malfoy's wand that I have had for about a year (since we met Lucius's actor at a previous convention). I figured it would make him feel good to get to use his dad's wand. And he didn't disappoint - he told everyone "wands at the ready!" for the photo. So we had to follow suit.

Natalia Tena played Tonks in the Harry Potter series. She was so sweet with the kids and also told everyone "wands at the ready!" for the picture. Gavriella is concentrating very hard on her magic and is being helped by one of the greatest aurors in the business!

Sam Smith plays Mary Winchester in Supernatural. She was extremely nice. She shook my hand, asked my name and introduced herself (as if I had no clue who she was). Sam and Dean obviously have a really great mom.

My friend Ron invited the kids to be in his photo with Tara Strong. Tara is a voice actress who has voiced so many animated characters I can hardly remember a quarter of them. In particular, she voices Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony. We met her at Boston Comic Con a few months ago, and she was very nice to the kids. We also found out at that point that she knows Hebrew! Dovid greeted her in Hebrew at the photo, and she didn't disappoint. She answered him in Hebrew and asked how he was doing. He responded that he was good (also in Hebrew). It was really cool to watch.

All in all we had a really great time, though most of it was spent in lines for photos. The best part was the fact that we were able to get ADA badges because of Dovid's diabetes, so our lines were mercifully short. We even managed to be first in line for Sam Smith! Definitely going to make sure we get ADA passes for all future conventions.

Weekend

Friday's thoughts:
I never thought I would make it home in time for Shabbos, but I did!!! I was within candle lighting, and I was so happy that I got to light candles with the kids. I love my job, but it's hard when you know you have to call patients back because it's time sensitive, but you also were supposed to leave an hour or more prior. Starting next week we're going to be doing 10 hr day schedules that that we'll have an extra day off per week. We're already working until 5:30pm most of the time, so it's not really working any more than we have been. We'll actually get to work less! On the flip side, our 6 hour days on weekends are now 10 hour days. But at least I'll be able to do a lot of catching up on the weekends when it's quiet.

I'm looking forward to Rhode Island Comic Con, which we're going to on Sunday. I'm going to be super busy that day, because immediately after getting home from the convention I have to go to a capella rehearsal. No rest for the weary... But I will share with you pictures and stories once I have recovered. 😃

Saturday's thoughts:
When you have to get up at 6 am every morning for work, sleep ins on the weekend are so sweet. I won't even tell you what time Shmuel made me get out of bed. It's embarrassing. And I had been having a weird dream that I don't really remember now...only that it was weird. (But what dreams aren't weird?)

Shabbos went as most Shabbosim do. Nothing too exciting to report. When it wasn't Shabbos I was trying to be productive and creative - writing tips about trying to conceive and colorizing a black and white photo (just to see if I could). Apparently I'm not too terrible at using photoshop to colorize, and I'm pretty impressed at my final product. See for yourself!

It's a photo of my grandpa from the 1920's. It's only part of a much larger photo of his whole family. I'm considering coloring the entire thing.

Huge Update (Part 2)

In November 2014, Ron, Gavriella, and I attended Rhode Island Comic Con in Providence, RI. Once again, we had a fabulous time meeting interesting people. I dressed up like Tauriel from The Hobbit.

Here I am with Colin Baker, most noted for being the 6th Doctor in Doctor Who.

We all then got to meet John Rhys-Davies, who played Gimli in Lord of the Rings and Sallah in Indiana Jones.

Gavriella got along really well with George Takei, who played Sulu in Star Trek. He was so sweet to her and kept shaking her hand.

From that point, school and work basically took over my life. When I wasn't doing one, I was doing the other, except during my two week breaks between semesters. In the spring of 2015 I started to get back into acting, something I did quite a bit of as a teen and that I miss doing. I auditioned for many student and other films, and I was lucky enough to be cast in a few of them.

The first one I did was called "The Edible Phase." It's an incredibly creepy 2 minute film with no dialogue and a whole lot of symbolism. See if you can get through the whole thing. haha You only get to see my face at the beginning, but if you stay until the end you get to see Gavriella make her film debut.



I was also cast in many roles in a horror film that is hopefully coming out in November called "Once Upon a Deadtime Story." I don't have any clips from that, but when it comes out I will be sure to share with you how you can see it. On the same day that I filmed my first scene for the horror movie, I also filmed a short called "The Catcher," where I play a hypnotist. You can watch that one, and it is much less creepy than the first film though still somewhat creepy.



I haven't been cast in anything since then, though I have sent in quite a few auditions for things. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to participate in more things as time goes on.

In May, I took a two-day trip to New York to meet my grandpa for the first time. I know I wrote about finding my mother's birth family way back in 2013, but this was the first opportunity I've had to meet her birth father. Grandpa Joel is a hoot! We had a great time together, and I wish he lived closer so I could see him more often and introduce him to the kids. We didn't exactly get the greatest picture of the two of us, but it's something.

We attended another comic con within the last few weeks called MASSive Comic Con in Worcester, MA. Our entire purpose was to go see Sean Astin again, and we actually ran into him completely by accident on the way out of the parking lot into the convention. He is a real gentleman and talked to us for over 10 minutes as a line formed at his booth. We took a video, but it's not very good. Either you can see us well and not hear us or hear us well and not see anything. haha But feel free to enjoy it anyway!


That brings us almost entirely up to date. I will do my best to post more regularly, but no promises. School and work have me running like a nutcase, though I am grateful for both! I will be starting clinicals for school in November, but I'll be doing them about an hour and a half from Boston. Sounds like a lovely commute, doesn't it? But it's all I have, and I will take it gladly!

Huge Update (Part 1)

Whoops... I can't believe it's been almost a year and a half since my last post. That's unreal!! So much has happened since then that I don't really know where to begin with it all...

Back in August 2013, even before Gavriella was born, I started a bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) program at Western Governors University. I continued the program after Gavriella was born, really pushing through as hard and fast as I could. I was able to complete the entire thing in 5 months and earned my degree at the very beginning of January 2014.

I made my sort of annual trip to Missouri just around then (Jan 2014) and was able to meet my student mentor from WGU, since she lives in the area that I was visiting. It was perfect timing, and my trip was awesome as a whole. I brought Gavriella along with me so she could see all of the people who were so excited when I first got pregnant the year before. I also got to meet some new people, which included my friend Heavyn's other best friend, Victoria. Less than a month later, the day before Heavyn's birthday, Victoria was tragically killed in a car accident. I feel so privileged to have met her and had the chance to spend the afternoon together before she died. I'm only sorry I didn't take a picture with her to remember our time.

I had another fun travel experience in March 2014, when I went to Louisville, KY for Louisville Comic Con. Gavriella came with me, of course, and we got to meet some fantastic people.

For example, Matt Smith (The 11th Doctor from Dr Who)

Karen Gillan (Amy Pond from Dr Who)

Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite)

And Sean Astin! (He's in too many films to name them all, but most importantly he was Samwise Gamgee in Lord of the Rings)

Sean loved getting to hold Gavriella. We had spoken via Skype about 6 weeks prior to the convention, so he was looking forward to this for weeks. It was funny, because the first time I walked up and saw him he didn't recognize me for a minute, but when he finally did his face lit up and he came around the table to give me a big hug. If you call my phone, you can hear his personalized outgoing voicemail message.

The day after I got back from Louisville I started my first hospital nursing job as a med/surg float pool RN at Carney Hospital. I worked per diem for there for a little over a year.

We had a bit of some turnover with childcare over the course of the past year, but our one rock is our 'manny' Ron. His first trip from his old home in New York to his new home here in Boston was in March 2014. Starting in May he was commuting from NY to Boston (and back) every week to help us out. He finally made the official move to Boston a few months ago.

Right after finishing my BSN I applied to an MSN+DNP program in midwifery at Frontier Nursing University. Ever since I decided I wanted to be a midwife, that is where I wanted to study. I didn't really have any other option in my head, and I made the deadline to apply in order to do my orientation in May and start classes in July...I only had to be accepted. I got that acceptance letter at the beginning of March, attended the orientation in Hyden, KY in May, and began my first classes in July.

The kids had a decent school year in 2013-2014. Chana and Dovid were at Torah Academy in the pre-k, and Tzipora was at a family play group. Even though there were struggles, the kids got through. During the summer they all went to Camp Shemesh, and during one of the weeks in between camp and school they traveled down to DC to visit with Aunt Shira and Uncle Ben. They had a wonderful trip and got to experience a week of camp down in Virginia.

In early August 2014, I got to attend Boston Comic Con with the whole family. I had the opportunity to introduce all of them to Sean Astin, and I got to meet John Barrowman (Captain Jack from Dr Who).

John had a particularly good time making Gavriella laugh. At first she was a bit leery, but then she cheered up, as you can see.

I think that is plenty for you to read for now, but more updates will follow. I promise!