A Night at the Orchestra

Thursday evening we had an excuse to get prettied up. Not that my girls need an excuse, I mean they could use, oh, I don't know, being awake, as an excuse to get prettied up, but it does make it just a tad bit more precious when there's another purpose than 'because I'm a girl'.

A night out, a night at the orchestra. We got word of a FREE event at a local college, a children's concert, featuring some wonderful music, including a performance of Peter and the Wolf. I've always wanted to see that one done.

What was even more fantabulous, was the pre-concert activities and refreshments (can't forget the cookies.) They had tables set up full of crafty supplies for the children to make themselves some theatrical masks, and they had many a table set up with performers and their instruments for a 'Musical Petting Zoo' where any child patience enough (and brave enough to tough it through the crowds) could try out the instruments.

When I say crowds, um, totally not kidding. Popular attraction, narrow hallway, tables taking up half of the hallway, and hundreds of people- oh, my, after the french horn I reasoned with my children that they could play Daddy's trombone, my flute & clarinet, their own violins, either Dad's or my cello, we've had a harp in the past (and would love one again someday!) and there's always the piano- we have a fairly musical home, we didn't need to fight the crowds.

I don't know how many of you have ever tried to get through some serious throngs with 5 young and fairly short people holding on... (Our Teenager stayed home with our coughing baby. have I mentioned how handy teenagers can be?!)

There was a point when the crowds moving in both directions just sort of stopped, we were all at an impasse, and it only took me a few seconds of that before I told my children to "Just back-up!" and the people behind us seemed glad to lean to the side so we could get by and they could take our place...

Yeah, that was the less-than-fun part, but the rest of the evening was great. Well, until it was time for the concert to start and the extremely unhappy toddler behind us decided to start wailing and thrashing about- oh, that poor mother, how mortifying. I felt bad for her, and then later I felt more empathy than sympathy when my little Merciful, who just turned 3, was wiggling much too much, and did a sudden face plant on her seat. I knew right away that one hurt- and I've known for some time now (about 3 years) that this child cries loud and long. Fortunately it was at a rather loud point in the music, and I think only the people relatively close to us knew what was going on. I pulled her in very close, hugging her little face to muffle things a bit, and I felt the warm drool near her mouth, only it wasn't just crying-too-much-drool, there was blood. She had split her lip- not too bad, but bad enough to be upset for several moments. That was another less-than-fun part.

Aside from the less-than-fun moments, it was fantabulously fun to have an evening out with most of my children, and a FREE evening at that! What a blessing!!