First Stage Show...

... of the year!

I love that we have a local theater that offers great kids stage shows for cheap!  Since we moved here 5+ years ago, we have been snagging tickets to pretty much everything, because you can't beat $4.00/seat!

We used to get all dressed up, because I had these grandiose plans to teach proper theater etiquette.  Then we realized that most everyone else came in jeans and T-shirts, so we've been slacking a little bit!

Here are the kids waiting for, "How I Became a Pirate"!

It was a good show.  I expect Ian will find some buried treasure any day now...  Well, if it ever warms up!

L.

Hop ‘Til You Drop…

In the very brief planning stages of this trip, Phil and I had a bit of a difference in opinion as to whether the park hopping option was necessary. He was right. It was.

We didn’t manage to get to a park until noon, and when we did, it was Hollywood Studios again. Our plan was to snag fastpasses for Toy Story Mania, but they were all long gone by the time we arrived. Since we really had no desire to wait in a 2 ½ hour line, we forewent this option until tomorrow… we hope…

We did stop at the Toy Story character greeting, where we met Buzz Lightyear, and we also traveled a little further into the park to meet Mike and Sulley for the first time. Again, I am amazed at how much Miah loves these guys! Under 2 years old, and she yells the word, “monsters,” with a smile on her face!

We also finally saw the Beauty and the Beast stage show after 3 unsuccessful attempts in ’06, ’08, and ’09. I thought the casting here was excellent, and Miah enjoyed growling at the Beast. We did stand in the back for the second half of the show, because she was tired of sitting…

Undoubtedly, the most exciting thing that happened to us on this trip was that we made a wrong turn at Hollywood Studios and found ourselves being directed by a real film crew to join a group of people who will be featured on the Walt Disney Resort’s television channel. Three takes later, we are looking forward to having our friends who are visiting Orlando in March keep an eye out for us in our television debut!

Just a couple of hours into our day, we hopped over to Epcot in an attempt to bang out the rest of Future World or the World Showcase. As it turned out, we were reasonably successful at completing part of both of them… again. I’m never planning to do Epcot this way again, but by the end of our time there, I had pressed pennies for 8/11 nations, we had Daisy Duck’s autograph, we had walked on to Journey into Imagination with Figment, The Seas with Nemo, and Spaceship Earth, and we had even played at the Kodak Image Works and explored the Living Seas.

Time’s up… We hopped a monorail to the Magic Kingdom for Wishes…

The monorail took a really long time to arrive (about 25 minutes), but we still managed to squeeze our way through the crowd during the parade and position ourselves for some prime fireworks viewing right in front of Walt and Mickey this time. We made Ian stay up, because we wanted him to actually see the show, and when it started, even Miah woke up. Wishes is traditionally my favorite show at Disney. I am so glad we made it in time… Looking around at my beautiful family, I know that all of my wishes really have come true…

After a few pictures, we booked it back to the monorail station, because the Epcot monorail was threatening to close at 10:00pm… Small problem… The monorail line was packed! Thanks to Phil’s quick thinking, we jumped on the resort monorail… Miah cried all the way to the Contemporary Resort, where some guests disembarked and we were able to sit down and pull her out of her stroller… just in time to travel to the ticket and transportation center… where Phil pushed both strollers down the ramp and I carried Miah… then we ran back up the other ramp and made it on the last monorail back to Epcot for the night with 5 minutes to spare…

We arrived back at the Epcot parking lot, found the van, and were on our way back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep before we attempt to fight the crowd in the morning for those Toy Story Mania fastpasses…

‘Night.

Lisa

Day 14 Photo Count: 141

Photo Highlights:

Caleb & The Aliens...

Have I mentioned lately how much I love this kid...

Wishes...

Epic Fail, Mom…

Today it occurred to me that no matter how hard I try, I cannot “protect” my kids from everything. It’s funny, because in recent days Phil and I have been talking about how our oldest two children have been quite sheltered, and we are getting to the point in life where they simply need to know about certain things. For instance… although they do know that words exist that are never to be said, I sincerely doubt they could name more than a couple of them… and those they have happened on by pure accident. Ironically, they know more about where babies come from (as in how they get in there and how they get out) then most of their friends. I think that’s kind of funny, since the other kids can string together whole conversations using swear words… I guess it has a lot to do with what you value teaching your children. In a recent interaction, one of the kids’ friends got mad at another one and called him, “gay”. Man, was he ever offended. And Grace was just shocked, saying, “So what… gay means happy!” And she honestly had no idea whatsoever that there were other possible connotations.

At any rate... This post isn’t about words… or sex… or homosexuality. Not really, anyway… although there are some things we are going to have to bring our kids up to speed on before they start getting mixed messages from their friends who think babies magically pop out of their mommies tummies when the stork arrives…

What this post is really about is Halloween… really…

I am not a huge fan of Halloween. To tell you the honest truth, I get creeped out quite easily, myself. And trick-or-treating… I hate it. I used to love it… until I had kids. I went trick-or-treating myself after I was married… twice. I mean, come on… who doesn’t like free candy, but taking my five children door to door to ask strangers for candy… when it’s dark out… and the streets are busy… It just puts my nerves on edge.

Three years ago, we accidentally missed the night for trick-or-treating (not Halloween, go figure), so we raided Wal-Mart and bought tons of discounted candy with our costumed kids. Two years ago, we went trick-or-treating at Sea World. Now that was fun. Last year we planned a Halloween party, combination family worship event. And that was fun, too. This year we’re repeating. I think I’ve almost got my kids “detoxed” from traditional trick-or-treating… and with it, “detoxed’ from ghosts… and goblins… and witches… and monsters (except of course Mike and Sulley).

So yesterday Seth comes home from art class… and I am always thrilled to see what new project he’s created, so I step out into the kitchen to find two renderings of skeletons. Further, I read the note from his teacher explaining that they have been studying Mexico’s “Day of the Dead”… and so I take a moment to decide whether or not I can deal with this and then give the skeletons (which are pretty cool by the way) a place of honor on the refrigerator.

This is followed by our field trip to experience the orchestra, this morning. My understanding was that we would be hearing music from Star Wars (which my kids aren’t really familiar with, but I love), and so we settle into our front row seats only to realize that we are not going to be enjoying Star Wars but rather Harry Potter, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, ghosts, witches, and even references to demons? Seriously? How the heck did I manage to buy tickets for this one?

In hindsight, maybe I should have marched our little gang out after I realized what was going on. Grace was sunken into her seat, nearly terrified, and Seth was sporting a sour look on his face, matched only by his exclamation, “what a waste of our lives…” Caleb didn’t seem to mind the content too much, but he was bored out of his mind, Ian was running back and forth between me and Grandma, and Miah just clapped at the end of every selection, because she is nearly 7 months old, so when people clap… she claps…

Our dissatisfaction with the program was probably only outdone by the poor little Amish kid sitting behind us…

I left some choice comments on the evaluation form…

When all is said and done, I don’t think this event is really going to have much of an impact on my kids’ lives. But I sure think we could have spent our time more constructively, this morning. And I just keep reminding them that, “Hey… it was really cool when the orchestra played the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of the concert!” To which Grace replies, “Yeah, Mom… that was the only cool part.”

Live and learn…

Lisa

One More Hot Date...

It was Caleb's turn tonight...

First, let me say, that he played pretty hard to get. When I told him we were going to have a date night, he was just horrified, saying, "Mommy, I'm not old enough to date," and then, "Mommy, I can't date with you... you already dated with Daddy!" I finally convinced him that it was OK for us to have a Mommy/Caleb "date night" and what that meant was that we were going to go do something special together, but yes... he is too young to date until his 42nd birthday, and no... Mommy would not date anyone but Daddy... and him... and Seth... and Ian...

Finally we were off to Thomas the Tank Engine Live: A Circus Comes to Town! We had to drive over an hour to get there, and Caleb actually took a nap, which was a good thing since the show had such a late start time. When we were less than five minutes from our destination it occurred to me that I had absolutely no cash on me and that it was going to cost us to park and that the parking lot attendant probably wasn't going to take my credit card...

We pulled over at the mall and I actually paid for an ATM transaction... the second time I've done this since moving here, and I think the second or third time I've done this in my life. I felt kind of irritated with myself. We hopped back into the van and headed straight for the Island of Sodor...

I think Caleb was actually more enamoured with the spinning, light up toy that I bought him... and with the huge bag of popcorn that we could not even manage to consume completely than he was with the show. Don't get me wrong, he had a fantastic time, and it was completely worth it. I just found it hilarious that I actually had to encourage Thomas' biggest fan on a couple of occasions to focus on the stage!

As far as what I thought? Well... I was looking at the number of ticket stubs we've collected over the past 18 months, and it's something like ridiculous... When you are almost 30 years old, every stage show starts to look the same (except at Disney, of course... Disney is magic...). At any rate, I loved being there, because this was for Caleb. I loved taking him out and just enjoying a night together. But dinner afterward (Cheddar's, yum) was probably a bigger highlight for me than Thomas... Still, here's a few pics. of the adventure:

And a quick video clip at the end of the show:



We got home around 11:30... Definitely after curfew...

Lisa

Girl's Night Out...

... Disney On Ice!

Grace and I really like to get out and have "girl time", but lately we have not been able to do that on a regular basis. When I heard that Disney on Ice was going to be in our area (well... sort of... nothing is really in our area, but it was close enough), I decided to purchase tickets to surprise her.

I got a babysitter for the boys (thanks, Monica), and Grace and I left the house a little after 1pm. We drove and listened to Disney music for an hour and a half and finally arrived. This is the point at which I told Grace what we were doing, and she was excited, but she also said something like, "Is that all we're doing?" which nearly sent me into a tirade... nearly, but not really, because I was determined to have a great girls night with her...

When we got inside, we purchased a program. It came with a lei, which was kind of fun. Then we looked over the souvenirs that were available and finally decided to purchase a Minnie Mouse cup with a snow cone in it. At this point, the MasterCard commercials started running through my head...
Two Tickets to Disney on Ice... (You really don't want to know)
One Program... ($12.00)
One Snowcone... ($10.00)
Seeing your daughter's face when she realizes that Tinkerbell is going to be in the show...
(priceless)... There are some things money can't buy... for everything else...
Well, you know how it goes, but actually I don't have a MasterCard...

At any rate, after a quick trip to the bathroom we finally settled into our seats. Grace had a great view. Mine was kind of obstructed, but I can live with that, because Grace was pretty much jumping up and down at this point saying, "Mommy, these are great seats!"

The show kicked off with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, and Goofy. I am trying to remember now if Pluto was on the ice or not. The classic Disney characters also appeared between acts.

The first scene was "The Lion King", and within seconds of the characters appearing Grace looked at me and asked, "Is this real?" And I knew that if I was going to preserve the Disney magic at our house for just a little while longer I was going to have to think quickly...

So here was my response (which I am pretty proud of):

"Of course not! You know the real characters live at Disney World! These are just people who want to share the character's stories with us!" If anybody thinks this is a terrible thing to do to a child, whatever... We are going to go on believing in Tinkerbell for as long as I can make it last...

Well... it turned out that I made a good call, because when we got to the Peter Pan scene it was pretty obvious that all of the skaters were hooked up to cables and that was what was making them fly, as opposed to "faith, trust, and pixie dust"!

The other scenes were "The Little Mermaid", which we thoroughly enjoyed even though some younger children screamed at the appearance of Ursula, and "Lilo and Stitch", which we didn't really get into, as we have never seen the movie. I do own it, but I am not in a real hurry to watch it. For some reason it has never appealed...

Here are some pics. of our Disney on Ice adventure, including the Zamboni, because Zambonis are cool:
After the show, we had dinner at Cheddars, which is really my favorite, but Grace enjoys it, too. Grace loved getting to order dessert!

It was a fantastic girls night!

Lisa

The Spider That Made Me Cry...

... So, I took my kids (Seth, Grace, and Caleb) to see Charlotte's Web today.

I read Charlotte's Web a long time ago, and come on... everybody knows Charlotte dies at the end. But I honestly got tears in my eyes when she did, and sat there thinking to myself what an idiot I must look like, because here I am sitting front and center, mind you, crying over a fictional spider, when I smash the real ones at my house all the time... ah... the irony...

After the show, I took Caleb to the women's bathroom, and let me tell ya, he was furious. The child does not understand why he can go into the women's bathroom but I can't go into the men's. At any rate, I let him go into the stall by himself, while I held the door. But, after a few minutes, I decided he was taking way too long, so I opened the door... and he was gone!

At this point, I pretty much screamed, "CALEB"... and a lady from the other side of the bathroom asked, "Were you with that little blonde boy?" And I (in a panic) of course said, "Yes!" And she said, "He just ran that way (pointing)... fast"!

So... of couse (again) I ran out the door, to find Caleb standing calmly with Seth and Grace... and to find Grace wiping tears off of her face, because Charlotte was dead... and so we come full circle...

Caleb is not allowed to go potty by himself in public restrooms anymore...

And somewhere there is a point in all of this... about Charlotte I mean... not about going potty...

On the way home, I talked with the kids about how Charlotte had great love for Wilbur because she gave her life for him. It's Biblical, you know... John 15:13 says, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Amazing where you can find truth... sometimes when you're not even looking for it.

By the way... I actually observed the rules about not taking pictures this time... not because I'm getting better at following rules or anything, but because I was in a rather conspicuos spot to be taking pics. I did, however, get a nice shot of the kids outside before the show:

Lisa

The Backyardigans Live...

... Well, Phil probably said it best, "If you've seen one stage show, you've seen them all!" But, come on we all know it's fun... at least for the kids!

This was Ian's first stage show, and actually it was Seth and Grace's first major stage show (although we've certainly hit our share of amusement park shows and educational assembly type shows). Ian wasn't all that impressed once he'd ripped his paper shield to shreds, but he did like it when Pablo flew across the stage, and I was able to convince him that the egg was a ball, so that kept his attention! Over all, he didn't do too badly. I am quickly learning that Caleb loves stage shows, and I am not sure the child ever sits that still for anything else. Seth had lots of fun (although the Backyardigans are probably getting a little on the young side for him). But is was Grace who I really enjoyed watching! She was so caught up in the whole thing, and on the interactive parts, I think she really thought the characters were listening to just her and that she could help move the plot along (even from the nosebleed seats up top)! It was great.

So... yeah... It was basically a spur of the moment decision to attend this show. We had considered it early on, but when the seats dropped to half off the day before the show, we figured we might as well go and take some friends along, too! We all had a fantastic time!

And, by the way, there was no photography allowed, so I only snuck in about 50 shots... along with every other parent there... I took many of them without the flash, which resulted in a whole bunch of blur (ah... pretty colors...), but by the end I realized that there were so many flashes going off, nobody was ever going to figure out who was taking the pics, so I got a couple of good shots in:

Lisa