A weekend with the bard

This weekend David and I were happy to leave our beloved children in the hands of my Mom while we escaped with our friends James and Jessi for a weekend of Shakespeare down in Ashland, Oregon. David and I attended the Oregon Shakespeare Festival on our honeymoon in August 2001 and have made it a point to return every year. We've gone as poor college students on a shoestring budget several times, we've gone twice with me very pregnant (Grace was born within 3 weeks of our visit in 2005!), and we've even gone with nursing babies twice. This was the first year since 2004 that I wasn't pregnant or bringing a nursing baby and it was great! We're very lucky that my Mom came with us when the two years that we brought the kids so we could catch a play or two. This year she stayed at our house with them and they all seemed to have a fantastic time. It sure makes it easy to leave the kids when I know they're having a blast with Grandma!

This is the first year we brought another couple with us and it was a lot of fun. We stayed in Medford because we found a nice hotel that offers two bedroom suites (impossible to find in Ashland) and it's nice to have a living area to hang out in and not have to sit on a bed in a regular hotel room. We hit up our favorite restaurants and visited all the fun shops and even added a new stop to our annual pilgrimage...Funagain Games. It's one of the largest board game stores online and offers some of the best prices. We arranged to have a backroom tour and were in awe of the huge variety of board games they stocked. We were there for two hours looking and trying out new games! David couldn't visit without buying a game, and actually bought three. David was super excited to try out Power Grid and so he called up our friends Pat and Katie on the way home and within an hour of arriving home we were sitting at the dining room table playing it. We also played Bananarama several times. Look for more game review posts soon :)

Back to the plays. We saw Much Ado About Nothing on Friday night which was fantastic. They set it in post WWII Italy and the setting really worked. Saturday night we saw Henry VIII which was done in the traditional setting. David and I have been watching The Tudors so the story was fresh in our minds and it made following the story line a little easier. The play ended at the baptism of Princess Elizabeth which felt rather abrupt since the meat of the story was just getting started!

I always enjoy walking through all the cool stores and this year was no exception. I found some neat cookie cutters, Christmas ornaments, and a pretty new apron (on sale for $8.99!) at my favorite store, Paddington Station. We found a neat shop that combined a florist and gourmet chocolates which smelled heavenly. The gift shop had a bunch of older programs and we lucked out and found the 2002 program which is the only one we're missing from our collection! That was the year we visited in March and they didn't have them printed yet. What a score!

We just got the 2010 play list and have already started thinking about what plays we want to see next year. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is on the docket which has me really excited! David and I are trying to see Shakespeare's entire canon so we'll probably try to see Henry IV Part 1 as the history plays aren't done as often. Hamlet is also a pretty tempting option so we may have to go for a record and see 3 plays next year!