Take me out to the ballgame

Last week, thanks to my generous employer, I won 4 tickets to Saturday's Twins game! I thought it would be really fun for me and Aaron to take the girls to their first baseball game - it was a noon game, so the timing was right, and it was free, so if they got bored or antsy we could just leave without having wasted money on tickets. I was really looking forward to it!

Maisie, however, had different ideas. "Baseball is boring," she said, and refused to go. So I invited Auntie Laura and Dylan to join me and Ella at the game instead!

The four of us took the train to Target Field. It's super convenient - it's the last stop and lets you off right outside the gate. Between the train ride and getting to snuggle up with Dylan, Ella was having a blast already!

We arrived at the ballpark at 11:50 to an announcement of a rain delay. It wasn't raining too hard, so we decided to wander around a little while we waited it out. Laura, Dylan, and I ate turkey sandwiches, and then we went to a store to shop for Twins gear... Dylan needed a cool hat like Ella's, and they both decided they needed giant foam fingers.

There was music on the PA, and the cameras were showing people dancing in the stands. Dylan decided that he had to get on TV. So he and Laura headed down into the stands to dance and try and get the cameras' attention.

Mission accomplished! The giant fingers worked, or something. Just a moment after I took this picture I went down to ask Ella not to sit on the stairs. Then the cameras caught all of us! I immediately started dancing like a fool (because hello, camera!) and we all waved. It was awesome.

After that, Laura and Dylan went to go try their luck to get on camera again in a different part of the stadium. While they did that, Ella and I had a corn dog...

And got her face painted.

We'd just picked up some cotton candy when we found Laura & Dylan again, so we all headed up to our seats. We were actually sitting under a big awning, so they were dry! So we decided to wait out the rain delay from the comfort of section 325, row 11.

This section is called "skyline view" - rather lovely, as you can see, even on a gray, rainy day. And for being so high up, we actually had a pretty good view of the field.

Target Field is pretty remarkable in that respect. I've had good seats and less-good seats there, but never an obstructed view or even a difficult sight line. It's really well built, especially when compared to the awfulness that it baseball at the Metrodome.

So finally, after a two and a half-hour delay... it was baseball time!

After all that time, the game itself was pretty anti-climactic. The first three innings were scoreless, and went fast. The big excitement was dancing to the music they played for the different batters.

They really liked dancing to the music.

We ended up staying through the end of the 4th inning. It was cold and damp, the Twins were down 2 runs, and we'd been there for over four hours at that point. We were all ready to head on home.

But despite the delays and the disappointing performance, it was a fun fun day with Laura and Dylan. We'll definitely do it again... and hopefully this time it'll be sunny.

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.