The Banana Visits from College

After YaYa departed it was only a matter of days before The Banana was scheduled to arrive home for a tiny visit since she had a little break at college. Peanut Maximus was counting the days until her arrival.

Two days before she was going to arrive, The Banana texted and asked if there was a symphony concert that weekend. Unfortunately there was not. She texted back that there WAS a Minnesota Orchestra concert in Minneapolis that weekend, and maybe we wanted to meet there and go hear Beethoven’s Fifth. Beethoven’s Fifth is one of my favorite symphonies (so well known, but famous for such good reasons, I think!) and the Minnesota Orchestra is so, so amazing. Dr. Peds wasn’t on schedule, so it didn’t take a lot of convincing for us to say yes to that idea! We drove down and met her at orchestra hall on Friday night, and then I drove with her back home after the concert, and Dr. Peds was sadly in a vehicle by himself. Poor guy! We were busy chatting. He was busy trying to stay awake.

The concert was FANTASTIC!!!! It was breathtaking. So many people playing together and playing so well. No recording can match the sound quality of an orchestra in orchestra hall. If my 14 year old self who listened to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on one of her great grandmother’s records while cleaning her mom’s house could have seen my 48 year old self sitting in orchestra hall listening to a world class, award winning orchestra playing that same symphony, she would have never believed it! We were sitting in a side balcony box, which was really interesting because we could see half of the orchestra playing their instruments up close, but we missed seeing the other half because we had no visibility of those players. We picked those seats so The Banana could see the violins well, and it was really fun to watch them play. However, we all agreed that we missed getting to see the other half of the orchestra play. We could still hear them, though. Wow!

I also had fun people watching in the audience, especially before and after the concert in the lobby.

The Banana had a little time to rest and relax when she was home. She read a book. She practiced the harp. She got to catch up with one of her good friends from high school and did a little shopping. We loved having all the energy come back to our house! Mr. TOF especially missed her antics.

Tuesday morning she headed back to college for swim practice and brought as much local water as she could hold in her water bottles along with her.