15 minutes of Fame

1. audition 2. call-back 3. booked
  Grant booked his first commercial for Garanimals!

This year Grant has been lucky enough to be going to auditions a couple of times a month.  He also is really enjoying it and says its "fun."  Not sure he fully understands it all because we are one of the few that cancelled our cable TV years ago and watch Netflix.  So he's probably never seen a commercial.   But he usually gets to play with a toy, answer silly questions or do something fun for his audition.   Auditions happen rather quickly.   The commercial is about a toddler who is in a dinosaur museum and his mom isn't paying attention when he pulls the head off of a dinosaur skeleton and of course it completely comes apart.   Grant was cast for a principle role in a commercial along with 2 other child stars.  One, who's parents are both TV actors/actresses and I must say she was very cool and Grant loved playing with her son.  At this age they like to choose 3 toddlers on set, a back up plan in case of melt downs.  It was a grueling long 6 hour day before they got to the kids scene.  We entertained the boys in a holding room for 6 hours by playing simon says, red light, green light and other games.  By the 4th hour of straight playing in a room with no TV or toys they finally took the first boy to wardrobe.  Once dressed he spilled water all over himself so they then took the 2nd boy to wardrobe and marked him in the shot where they wanted him but no filming. As it turned out, the first boys shirt dried and they took him to the set and got the shot they wanted and said "its a wrap."  So long story short we waited 6 hours.  Grant never got to put his wardrobe on or film. He did get the credit for being booked out of 4000 kids and can put it on his resume for exposure and he did get paid. My heart almost broke for him when we were leaving because he wanted to know why he wasn't getting dressed because he wanted to go the museum.  It was a learning experience and I now know the procedure and can explain it to Grant for the next time.   He did have fun playing with his new friends and the moms were great.

Grant at his fitting for wardrobe, the orange outfit above. Below is him waiting to be called.  They had him sit and hold his arms out to gage how long they wanted the sleeve to hang or the pant to fit. The seamstress tailored it to his needs. 

Walking to the holding room across the set while they turn the lobby of this hotel into a museum

Our view from the holding room. 

Left to right, Ocean, Huxley and Grant.  Wish I would of gotten a better picture of these guys

Setting up the green screens for the shot.

Wardrobe trailer

Literally nothing to do in this room except play all over this couch, simon says, red light green light.  There were no toys, TV, and it was small. Added bonus is it was right off the set so it was also expected to keep 3 toddlers fairly quiet while they filmed other scenes.  We were in this room for 6 hours and the boys did really well.

Vacation

We were overdue for a real vacation.  Not one where we vacation wherever Dave is stationed with the Army. Although those are fun and I love to travel it was nice to get away as a family with no work.  This was our first real vacation in five years and we are going to make it a practice to do it yearly.  We went on Carnival Cruise lines to the Mexican Riviera and stopped in Puerta Vuerta, Cabo, and Mazatlan.  The crew was fabulous and so attentive. Excellent entertainment, I saw a couple comedy shows while the boys slept. The beaches were beautiful and Grant sat at the shore laughing while the waves crashed on him and carried him back and forth.  Surprisingly he wanted to dance a lot on the Lido deck and learn the electric slide so we did. We stuffed ourselves with delicious lobster and steak, all you can eat cookies, ice cream the works.  Thanks to Pinterest I brought zip lock bags so I could make a quick sandwich or bag some goodies to take to shore with us. My coffee mug and water bottles, magnets for the room to hang our maps, etc.  Oh, now that I'm raving about the great time I just remembered I was sea sick 3 out of the 7 days.  The last night while packing was the worst with the rough seas.  Try packing and wanting to throw up at the same time on a deadline to get your suitcases into the hallway. Grant can see the cruise ship from the beach where we live because its docked in Long Beach.  He thinks we can go back anytime and keeps asking to go on "his" cruise ship. Too bad he doesn't understand its big $$ and we can't do that everyday.

Click Here, our little dancer

Dave reading for school out on the balcony of our room.

Pirate excersion in Puerta Vuerta.  Sword fighting with Spider.  He got a spider tattoo drawn on him and when we went ashore to a private beach the pirates put on a treasure hunt for the kids.  They dug up numerous piles of sand looking for buried treasure.  One pile had a coconut and all the kids left it thinking it wasn't a treasure.  Grant thought another mans trash is his treasure and proudly picked it up while holding the master treasure map and went to the next dig. 

His personal pirate "spider" made him a grasshopper out of palm leaves

The arches, tourist trap 

Every night his steward Gregorio made him a different animal.  We would come back from dinner and Gregorio said "Mr. Grant I left you a surprise."  Grant went running in and always came out and yelled down the hall, "I love it, thank you."  However, we had a melt down every night when the animal lost his shape