On the Road with The Men (Fred & Hugh).The Music.The Show

Hola! Jolene Navarro checking in from all over Texas.

On The Road Again. Traveling Texas

June has been a wild ride. (1687 miles to be exact)
On The Road Again has been playing in my head.

Tea at Boas & Tiaras 

Tiara's should be standard Sasha Summers,
Candace Havens & Jolene Navarro Fresh Fiction

It started with tea at Fresh Fiction's Boas & Tiara event with the amazing Candace Havens and Sasha Summers.
I now have a box of tiaras in my car for emergencies.




http://freshfiction.com/



Then on to Canyon, Texas to have the best week of a writer's life....summer camp with other writers at West Texas Writer's Academy with Jodie Thomas. Last year my current release, The Texan's Secret Daughter was brainstormed with these great ladies in my class.

Every writer needs a tribe. 

The ladies reading The Texan's Secret Daughter
they helped plot.

http://www.wtamu.edu/academics/eod-writing-academy.aspx

Fred & I celebrating 30 years of marriage

Then on to Houston to celebrate 30 years of marriage.

1987 in Houston, Fred Navarro asked him to marry him. I was 19. Then June 17, 1989 at 21 years-old I pledged my life to him and he to me. It was the best discussion I ever made in my life. It has been 30 years of an amazing journey full of bumps and growth (and four great kids).


Fred has always encouraged me to pursue my dreams even when they seemed way beyond my reach. This ranch boy from the Texas Hill Country even moved to Houston so I could finish school. To say it was out of his comfort zone would be an understatement.


I'm not one to get caught up in celebrities, but there is one that for some reason I have developed an weird and strange connection too....Hugh Jackman. Maybe not so weird...but intense. lol

The Man. The Music. The Show. Hugh Jackman

When he announced his first live show, The Man. The Music. The Show. would open in Houston June, 18 my husband bought front row tickets for my birthday. See how amazing Fred is?

So thirty years later we headed back to Houston to watch Hugh sing and dance. It was amazing. First his wife and children came out and walked right in front of us. I adore her and the way they support each other.
He is so much more than a movie star. He gave everything to each dance and song. He told us stories of his childhood and being called a sissy by his older brothers and almost being fired from X-Men. He was open and authentic in a way that went above my expectations. 

If you saw The Greatest Showman, then you would recognize the captain of Hugh's dance crew. So much energy was in every move they choreographed. They were amazing. They sang, danced and included sigh language in one of the contemporary numbers.

The Man. The Music. The Show. Hugh Jackman

He went on to add songs from Beauty and the Beast (Hugh played Gaston on stage). He played a little piano and sang songs from and The Boy From Oz.

The Man. The Music. The Show. Hugh Jackman

It's the musical about Peter Allen. An Australian singer/song writer that wrote Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do), Don't Cry Out Loud, I Go to Rio and I Honestly Love You.

This is the role that won Hugh his Tony. 

One of my husbands favorites is I Honestly Love You because it was sung by his first crush Olivia Newton-John. Something he has in common with Hugh. LOL

The Man. The Music. The Show. Hugh Jackman

When Hugh was talking about his Olivia poster in his bedroom my friend, Sonomi Kennedy, yelled that she had a poster of him in her room ...that got his attention and he chuckled and when she raised her hands he came to the edge of the stage and shook it.

The Man. The Music. The Show.
Hugh Jackman shaking Sonomi Kennedy's hand. 

He did a great job of interacting with the audience. You could tell he loves preforming live.

The Man. The Music. The Show. Hugh Jackman

The Man. The Music. The Show. Hugh Jackman

The Man. The Music. The Show. Hugh Jackman

The performance of One More Day from Les Miserables was breathtaking.



He did a full set in honor of his wife and family then left the stage to hug her.
It went from big performances to small quiet moments sprinkled with stories.



He did a tribute to 42nd Street with a full tap routine then went crazy with drums to AC/DC and Van Halen...It was AWESOME.



https://www.hughjackmantheshow.com/

He has added San Antonio to his tour and it so happens that Fred and I had our first date in October 1986 so we are going again. If you get a chance you should see the show. The performance is so big that just about any seat will be good.


How is your summer going? Is there a celebrities you would want to meet? Have you been to or plan to go to The Man. The Music. The Show. Hugh Jackman?

Leap of Faith...Doing the Impossible

Hello, Jolene Navarro here. I have a confession to make. We all dream of something. It can be as big as standing on the podium and bending your head so they can place a gold medal around your neck or as simple as owning a home and having your own family. 

I’ve had many dreams, and some I just out grew, but there was one that was always with me, one I never thought would come true: writing stories that would be published and sit on book store shelves.

 

Dreams of doing huge book signings and getting sack full of letters from people I didn’t know. I imagined getting awards and all sorts of accolades. I had a strong imagination. 

Many of the notes home from my teachers were how I was not meeting my potential; I spent too much time daydreaming. One teacher was worried about me because I seemed to be marching to a different drum beat than the other kids in my class. Plus, I could not spell to save my life, and it was not from the lack of trying or studying. By the sixth grade I learned to cheat on my spelling test so I would not be grounded. I would fail tests even though I had the right answers because ‘if it was spelled wrong it did not count.’ I worked hard, but was accused of being lazy.

This is how I felt most of the time in school. This is from the Ron Clark story. Great inspirational story about teaching.

I hesitated going to college, all I could see was more humiliation, so I went to art school in Houston. As I moved through life, one thing stayed with me. It was the stories in my head. I had developed characters that were always talking, but I never told anyone about them. I went to sleep telling myself stories.

Fast forward a bit. As a young wife and mother I did end up going back to school. I was diagnosed with dysgraphia. It is the other side of dyslexia. I usually just say I’m dyslexic, because most people are familiar  that word. Kind of like telling people I’m from San Antonio because most people outside of Texas have not heard of Boerne.

Dysgraphia is a decoding issue also but works on the output. Spelling, pronunciation, handwriting, and flow of language are some of the struggles. I went on to graduate with honors. My Masters is in Education with a specialization in reading and spec. ed.  About the same time this happened, I was approaching forty, my oldest of four children was about to graduate from high school and I had lost both parents suddenly and unexpectedly. I had a strong sense of time running out.

The one dream that still burned within me was being a published writer. As I heard the clock ticking, I knew I would have to take a risk, to put myself out there to be humiliated if I wanted to find out if I could succeed.

Last weekend we saw “Eddie the Eagle”.  

From left, director Dexter Fletcher, Hugh Jackman, Eddie Edwards and Taron Egerton on the set of EDDIE THE EAGLE. Photo Credit: Larry Horricks-TM & © 2016 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. LARRY HORRICKS

The story of a boy that had to have surgeries on his legs. He had one dream to become an Olympic athlete. The only problem? He wasn’t athletic, but he didn’t let failure stop him. It is a great story about persistence. He ended up training for the ski jump because England didn’t have a ski jumper. He started off on the small one and worked his way up. He crashed, people laughed at him and he was told he didn’t belong, but in the end he saw his dream come true.

Being a writer is pretty much the same way. There will be people telling you that you’re not good enough or you need to be realistic and do something else. You can get help, go to workshops, even get a mentor or surround yourself with other writers, but eventually you have to sit on that bar high above the world all alone and jump.  

More about the movie and Calgary-

Sometimes you will crash, sometimes you might stick the landing, but people still tell you it’s not enough. No matter your obstacles, do you have the persistence to get up and jump from that bar again? Do you have people that will celebrate you no matter the outcome, small or big?It has not always been easy, but I've seen three of my stories on the shelf and I have two more coming. I'm living my dream.

Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman in Eddie the Eagle

Do you have a dream that you have been hesitant to pursue?  On a side note, my husband (my real hero) accused me of writing this blog so I could post pictures of Hugh Jackman. I say no comment. But you can comment! Leap people, find the thing you love and fly!