Return of the Sugar Plum Fairies

Tonight was a special night, as we once again returned to see "The Nutcracker," this time a different performance by a local ballet school in Forsyth County. This was a very, very good performance, with talented dancers and great choreography. As you can see, the mice and toy soldiers were neat costumes, but so were the other dancers too - in fact, there were a lot of dancers and a lot of different costumes. The young lady we came to see tonight in the show actually had two separate parts - a mouse and a golden angel.

They did a great job with the different ethnic dances, especially the Chinese one. They actually extended that one, with a dragon dance and lots of twirling flags - to the delight of Madison. She enjoyed the whole thing from start to finish, and every so often we'd look over at her and see her imitating some of the moves she was watching on the stage.

Here she is posing in front of a Nutcracker out in the lobby at the intermission. Every year, Clara has this dream, and every year it's a neat thing to see: we've seen about four or five different versions here from different schools and organizations, and are becoming experts on Tchaikovsky. The music gets stuck in your head pretty easily, which is neat to hear from Madison, of course.

Tonight at bedtime, we had a fun moment: Madison wanted to tell Daddy a bedtime story. SO, she started it off. There were ten characters in it, ranging from Belle to Indiana Jones. All were ice skating, and all were falling on the ice a lot. This got a lot of giggles from Madison, who had her imagination going into overdrive telling Daddy this expansive story of snow and Christmas and characters having fun. When finished, she turned to Daddy and proudly announced, "THE END." Daddy applauded - it was actually pretty good!

Finally, today we wrapped up our series "Humbug!" It was a very special three weeks, where we told Ebenezer Scrooge's story in quite a unique way. All the actors did a fantastic job, and the audience was really into it. Mommy did a nice job with everyone's costumes, as you can see above. These sorts of series Daddy really gets into, as far as writing goes. Everything from messages to skits, all of it has a cultural and education value, all on top of the spiritual value. The teacher inside is filled with glee at seeing the kids so into an ongoing story like this. Next month, we return to Wonderland, and many of our cast members are returning for that. It should be very, very good.

Tomorrow should be a much calmer sort of day. It should be. But it might not be! We've got some catching up to do on presents, shopping, wrapping and movie watching. Hopefully we'll get some headway there. No matter what, our vow is to enjoy it, and enjoy these last few weeks of the season.