A visit from the rents

My mom and dad managed to make it to three performances while they were here, and they still wanted to see more. There’s a lot going on in this show, so it’s hard to see it all! After the last performance they saw, I gave them a short backstage tour, and we were able to snap some pictures in one of my costumes. The one I am wearing is for our first number “Need a Little Christmas”, or as we like to call it, “Wreaths”.We get to dance with these giant wreaths, holding them at eye level and flipping them back and forth from either a gold side, or a green or red side, depending on where you stand. Apparently it’s a really beautiful effect, though I wouldn’t know since I’ve never actually been able to watch it. The wreaths are a bit tricky to maneuver, but we do it because it’s our J-O-B (just a little saying that our director likes). I’m not sure that this is our most exciting, or quintessential, costume, but the two costumes that most people take pictures in were actually thrown into the wash before I had a chance to get pictures, so I’ll have to get those later. Here I am, hoping for a letter at the Grand Ole Opry post office. Nothing yet. But I'm still smiling!

After the performance we decided to check out the Opryland Hotel, which is right next door, because it is renowned for its Christmas decorations as well as its beautiful interior and design year round. It was the first time I had been through the hotel, and it really did surprise me how grandiose everything was. There are a number of different wings of the hotel, and each wing has a large atrium area in the middle with loads of plants, trees, waterfalls, and rivers winding through. There are walkways at all different levels of the hotel to view these atriums. For Christmas, there are lights hanging all over the place, along with different themes in each wing. The first one had jungle animals in hot air balloons hanging from the glass ceiling, all of them dressed in holiday garb. Sounds crazy, but it was also crazy cute. Another wing had a large nativity where the people and animals were made out of colorful tent-like material and were lit inside, and they were surrounded by palm trees wrapped in colorful Christmas lights. A third wing had an outdoor all-white nativity with statues sitting in a shallow pond. The reflection in the water gave it a really nice effect. The trees outside of the hotel are all covered in lights as well, and some of the Rockettes in our group participated in a tree-lighting ceremony before we opened our show. I guess these are some of the things that won Nashville the title of one of the top ten places to spend Christmas by Travel + Leisure magazine! I am loving it!