december 4th

Whew! We survived our crazy day yesterday! We did a lot and had a lot of fun doing it all!

First stop was the Old Town School to see the Nut Tapper.

Okay... first off... a funny story. We were on the bus to the Old Town School... the bus was basically empty... just us and this one guy. So naturally, the one guy caught my eye when he pulls out this wad of metallic Christmas colored pipe cleaners and started making something out of them. I spent the rest of our ride watching him working on his creation and wondering what his story was. Well... when we got off the bus, he got off right behind us.

Well... imagine my surprise when the curtains opened and the first person on stage was none other than the pipe cleaner man from the bus...

(if you click on the photo to make it larger you'll see that his hat is covered with pipe cleaner creation we saw him working on while on the bus)

The show was so much fun! The kids LOVED it!!! This was the hour long field trip version so I'm sure the full length show is even better.

It is loosely based on the Nutcracker story. Lots of fun music and great dancing.

Here is the Nut Tapper battling with the Mouse King...
And instead of the usual international dances from the Nutcracker, the Nut Tapper had Mexican Folk dance...
and flamenco...
Our neighbors had joined us for the show so we all went out to lunch afterward. They gave us a ride home then which was really nice. We were home long enough to grab the kids' snow pants and then we headed out to meet friends at the Nature Museum.

Somehow my photos I took of all of the kids together didn't turn out very well, so here's what I have...

Alex peering out from the play area...
One of our favorite things at the museum is the butterfly haven. Usually it's the butterflies that captivate us... but yesterday it was the birds...

The quail have been there a while but they had recently added some new birds.

The museum was getting ready to close so the kids bundled up to head to our next outing of the day. But first Alex wanted to check out North Pond...
Being out there on that walkway made me a nervous wreck (since it was covered in snow and ice)... so we weren't out there long.

Then we started walking toward the zoo...
Because we were going to see the ZooLights!!!
We walked around checking things out and enjoying the lights...
But wondering how it was that we practically had the place to ourselves...
Well... perhaps that was because the official ZooLight events were only on the weekend this week.

We found our way to the main entrance and were the last ones out before they shut and locked the gate.

I took this on our way to the restaurant...
Jeff and a friend of ours were supposed to meet us to see the lights, but instead we all had a nice dinner together.

So, that's our crazy day from yesterday!

Okay.... time to get going on Friday now! :-)