Theatre Reunion

A couple months ago, we went out to dinner in Bismarck with Travis, a friend from our university days.  He, his wife Sedie, and their son Vladimir live in MA, but Travis and Vlad have been spending the summer outside Mandan with Travis' parents.  Travis has been writing, and Vlad has been enjoying living in the country, playing with the animals, swimming, and generally being carefree.  Sedie stayed behind to work but has now joined them, although they will all be returning to MA together shortly.  But first, Travis arranged for us to join them for an afternoon of fun!

Travis and I "did theatre" together at university, acting together and even directing one another in plays.  There are a few other university theatre alumni living in the Bismarck/Mandan area, and one of them was available to join us today: our friend Nita and her daughter Dana.  We all met at Travis' parents' rural home for a potluck meal, and then the children played together while the adults visited.  Travis, Nita, and I are all university professors, so we "talked shop" today when we weren't chatting about memories from our school days together.  It was great!

This perspective is looking down from the second-story deck into the backyard where Vlad has been able to swim while at his grandparents'.  He invited all the blondes to join him today.  Left to right: Hillary, Vlad, Dana, Suzanna, and Abigail

Out on his parents' property, Travis found this turtle and decided to see if it would like to be a family pet.  The turtle has been eating well, so it will be joining Travis' family to make a new home with them in MA.

Travis' parents have two very friendly dogs, with whom we played throughout the day.  They also have several horses, and Travis called them in so that we could get a close-up look and pet them.

The horses were super-friendly.  A few took a hankerin' to me, and I might still have been trapped amongst them and their sniffing, nibbling, nudging heads had Travis not shooed them away!

Here's the whole gang!  In the back row, left to right, are Sedie, Vlad, Hillary, and Nita; in the middle row are Travis, Susan, I, and Abigail; and in the front are Dana and Suzanna.

As we were leaving, Nita and Dana invited us to follow them into Bismarck to see their house (and extend the girls' playing-together time).  Susan, Nita, and I visited in the backyard (and I played with their energetic little dog Mojo) while the girls played with Barbies, but eventually we had to break it up and head back home.  It was a very fun reunion with people whom I'm happy to say are still good friends after all these years.