Back from Vacation!

Hello Family and Friends! I hope you're all having a great day! Mine's been fine. I just finished walking and doing my yoga. It was quite cold to go walking, but I bundled up and really enjoyed it. I am getting back into all of my stretching with Yoga now that I'm in the off-season. When I'm in rehearsals and performing I get most of what I need in a workout, but during the winter months I do my own workouts. I enjoy both times for different reasons. In rehearsals and shows it's a lot more fun because you are with your friends and interacting with people, but when I'm by myself it can be very relaxing and rejuvenating. :) When I visit my family, I get to go to Yoga class with my Mom and that is so much fun. She has led that class before, but I haven't gotten to be there for that. I have heard that she does a wonderful job and I'm sure she does. She's a very good teacher. :)

The day after I was done with my last day of shows at Silver Dollar City on December 30th, my husband Tim, and I left for Nebraska, where my youngest sister got married! It was so much fun. I was really excited to be with my family for New Year's Eve, and was able to spend some time with my sister before she got married. She has a great husband and they are a splendid couple. I'm very happy to have a new "brother"! :) He's very nice and fits in with our family really well. I got to spend a lot of time with all of my sisters, my parents, and Tim. I am so thankful for those moments when we're all together having fun and enjoying each other's company. My mom and dad are kind enough to let all of us stay with them. It's quite an interruption in their normal routines, but they are more than willing to house us all! :) Thank you Mom and Dad!

After the wedding, my mom, dad, Tim and I all flew to Hawaii. We went to the island of Oahu. Tim's grandma and grandpa Haygood live there, so we stayed with them and my mom and dad stayed at a condo that was basically right on the beach! It was so much fun and so warm! How weird to leave icy streets and arrive in a place where it's over 80 degrees! We stayed there for a week and really enjoyed ourselves. We went whale watching and saw not only whales, but dolphins as well! They swam with our boat for about 10 minutes way out in the ocean! It was so neat and they are so happy it just made me laugh to watch them. They were spinner dolphins, so they like to do a lot of jumping and spinning in the water. It was so amazing. We also went on a submarine and went down as deep as 120 feet below the ocean surface. We saw some sharks, sea turtles and lots of tropical fish. That was really beautiful. When you're down that deep a lot of the natural light gets filtered out, so red was one of the first colors to get filtered out. It was pretty gray when we took a picture inside the submarine without a flash. Very interesting. When we surfaced there where tons and tons of bubbles, and all of a sudden, we were up above the surface again! Wow. Quite an experience. We also went on a jungle jeep tour at Kualoa Ranch up into the jungle on a mountain and a movie scene tour. We were able to see where parts of many movies were filmed, and some filming locations for "Lost". It was very pretty out there. There were also many great places to eat on the island and we all got to go boogie boarding together, too. That was really fun! We were able to go and look at the North Shore a couple of days, too, where there were record 35 foot waves crashing in on the beach! There were warning signs everywhere, telling people there was no swimming or surfing. Some of the beaches were even roped off because the waves were coming up so high on the beach. It was so amazing to see. It was very beautiful and scary all at the same time. There is so much power in the ocean, you can't even begin to grasp it. I was so thankful to get to see and do all of these wonderful, interesting and beautiful things! Thanks to my mom and dad we were able to get around to see these things. They had a rental and let us ride along with them. We all had a great time and were quite a good travel group. :) We all get along really well and have a lot of fun together.

Well, it was back to reality for all of us this last week. We arrived home and started getting back into the swing of things. My dad is an accountant, so he is very, very busy right now. I'm so thankful that he and my mom got to take a vacation. That is very rare during tax season, for those of you that don't know! :) It was such a special time for all of us. Believe it or not, it was refreshing, literally and figuratively speaking, for us to get back to the winter weather that we're used to. It was so neat having the tropical temperatures, but I need to have my 4 seasons to feel normal! :) It's been cold enough, though!

I hope this finds all of you doing well and feeling healthy. I'm truly thankful for your friendship and support in all I do. Thank you for visiting me and I hope you all have a great day! Have safe travels and enjoy each day. God bless you.

Your friend,
Cassandre' :)