Sunday, February 6, 2011

December 24th, the End

The day in Florida started out sunny and warm...a beautiful day.  I'd made plans to meet my childhood friend Lori and her husband at the Orlando Doubletree Hotel, where I would be performing that night.  It was great to see Lori again.  She'd reached out to me a while back on facebook and though I'd accepted her friend request, I thought she was someone I'd gone to high school with~  But when I began planning the tour and she told me she worked in the hotel industry in Orlando, we spoke on the phone and I put it all together.  This was the little girl I used to play Barbies with on my front porch!  Amazing!  Anyhow, she'd been reading about the tour and had arranged for me to perform on Christmas Eve at the Christmas event at the hotel in return for a couple of nights' stay and a discounted room for the third night.  It was perfect because my sister-in-law was flying my daughters and my husband down on Christmas Day so we could drive back together, and we needed a place to stay.  Our Christmas gift to the girls was to be a one day visit to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. 
But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I met Lori and her husband Paul at the hotel, got checked in  and then we went off to lunch.  Or, actually, maybe it was the other way around?  Maybe we went to lunch first and then to the hotel?  I honestly am not sure!  By that time I was running on pure adrenalin.  Maybe if Lori reads this she can set me straight!  I do know that we had a fun lunch together at THE GOLDEN CORRAL and did a lot of catching up.
When I went to my room I was totally surprised to find a lovely Christmas flower arrangement that featured a ceramic sculpture of a Norman Rockwell painting, waiting for me on the dresser.  It was a gift from several of the people from Planet Christmas to congratulate me on the Grammy nom and the tour.  It meant the world to me and was so pretty.  I've kept the figurine and will keep it in my indoor Christmas display for all the years to come.
I hung out in my room and tried to catch up on emails and so forth until it was time to go down and do the last show of the tour.  I set up in the lobby and started singing, and I was somewhat discombobulated that for quite a while my only audience was grownups, no kids.  But they were in  a partying mood, and we ended up having a wicked good time.  Mrs. Claus showed up and read the kids a story and they decorated cookies and then I sang some more got one of the guys to come up and do Candy with me, and all the way around it was a fantastic way to end the tour.  I went back up to my room filled with all kinds of emotions....happiness, sadness, nostalgia, gratefulness, but most of all excitement because the next day I would see my FAMILY finally!!!!!!!!!!

Before I wrap up the tour blog I do want to say that all during the last few weeks of the tour I was having a blast keeping up with the success of the Holdman video on YouTube.  It was so much fun to check every day to see how many views it had gotten and what kind of comments were left.  It was my goal to see it hit 100-thousand views by Christmas and by the end of Christmas Day it had gone over, and that was very gratifying.  THANKS AGAIN to Richard and to everyone who watched it, and thanks to everyone who hosted and came out to the shows. What a great experience!

And that's it for my tour blog, except for one last entry which I will write later, in which I will reflect upon the tour as a whole, the adventure and what it did for me emotionally and spiritually, and whether or not I'm up for doing it again. I'll be sure to do that within the next couple of days.

 But now I have to get off the computer and do something I haven't done in a while.  READ A BOOK!!!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks Judy, The hotel was happy to have you! (And yes, we had lunch first then went to the hotel LOL.)
    Even though the crowd we had was not huge, they were enthusiastic and the guests checking in would stop and enjoy the music too before heading off to their rooms. Cookies, cocoa and the sing along with the kids at the ends was priceless. 12 days of Christmas will never be the same again! It was great seeing you again after all these years!

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  2. It was great seeing you again too, and meeting your funny hubby, Paul. Thank you for the gig and the great room and the chance to rest up before the long drive back. Let's not wait 40 years to see each other again...or I really might not remember you at all by then!!! :)

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