Winter Break

Ya Ya had the week off from school for Winter Break, and it went well.  We slept in each morning a bit longer than usual.  Ya Ya got up and watched Little House on the Prairie nearly every morning before I got down to make breakfast.  Auntie Dot gave her a DVD set of the first season of the TV show, and Ya Ya loves it.  I used to love it too.  In fact, I did a lot of scheming when I was a kid, making my brother pay me his whole allowance for getting to watch Scooby Doo instead of Little House just one day each week.  My mom found out, and I had to pay back all the money.  Regardless, I have fond memories of the TV show, even though I was always upset that it had very little to do with the books, and now as an adult, and I am not really very thrilled about the content of the books at all.  (There are a lot of scary racism issues in there).  Anyway, Little House afforded me a great deal of extra sleep in the morning all week, and made for three very happy little kidlets.

During winter break, we sledded down our luge track, went to the children’s museum, and the kidlets built a lot of interesting things with legos.  I taught lessons, and music class so my schedule remained somewhat limited, but we had a peaceful, good week.

On Saturday evening Ya Ya and I went to see the musical The Secret Garden.  I had heard that the playhouse was putting on a production several weeks ago, and I thought immediately that it would be something really fun for Ya Ya , since The Secret Garden is one of her favorite stories.  We read aloud the unabridged version last winter.  However, being me, I completely forgot about it until last Wednesday when I happened to walk by the box office for the playhouse, which is in the same building as the children’s museum.  So I bought tickets, and after having to switch dates because I didn’t think through my schedule carefully, we attended the play on Saturday evening and had a wonderful time.  The acting was great (I was especially impressed with the children in the performance . . . wow!).  While the plot unfolded, an artist backstage painted silk backdrops that were lit up, and at the end of the play portrayed a very vibrant garden.  Ya Ya was entranced by the story and especially by the live art.  We had fun talking about how the book and the performance were similar and different.