Day at the Museum/Children's Theater

Or, why I enter everything into my phone.

Yesterday morning, Aaron and I woke up to the sound of giggles coming from the girls' room. (It's a nice way to wake up.) They'd woken up before us and, instead of coming and getting us up, had decided to stay in their room and play together. It was pretty sweet.

Anyway, I looked at my phone to see what time it was and there was an entry from my calendar: Children's Theater, 2:00 Today. I said to Aaron "Hey, we have tickets to a show at the Children's Theater today." He asked what time and what show. "2:00. I don't know what show but it's in my phone, so it must be right." And it was! I got up and looked at the tickets, and sure enough we were going to the matinee of Charlotte's Web.

We hadn't been to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in forever, so we decided to go early and check out some art before the show. Maisie was initially reluctant ("There's nothing to dooooooo"), but quickly warmed up to it and ended up having a lot of fun.

She especially liked the statues. And the MIA has plenty of interesting statutes, especially in the Asian art galleries!

So there was plenty of silly posing for pictures.

They also really liked the suits of armor - this one was about 500 years old!

We ended up in one of the contemporary galleries, where the girls REALLY liked this large statue.

Ella, so silly. "I can see his butt, Mama! Take a picture of his butt!"

After seeing some art and a quick snack, we went over to see Charlotte's Web. Ella said, "I hope there's no dying parts in this show!" Uh... turns out, Charlotte's Web is almost entirely dying parts, starting with the very first line ("Where's Papa going with that ax?"). It's a lot heavier than I remembered it being - the show follows Wilbur as he struggles against the inevitability of death, starting with his own, and then being forced to come to terms with Charlotte's death. But even though Charlotte dies, her babies live on, as does Wilbur because of her efforts while she was alive. Wow, these are some pretty heavy themes for a children's story! But I don't think the girls really got all that, any more than I did when I read it at Maisie's age. They both enjoyed the play, thought it was sad when Charlotte died, but were happy that some of her babies chose to stay with Wilbur in the barn. It was one of the best shows I've seen at the CTC - I highly recommend it.

Between the museum and the theater, we had a really lovely afternoon.