Saturday, December 31, 2016

New Year's Eve

With about 5 hours of 2016 to go, the Rowe family is wishing you all a Happy New Year!



By the way, see that pink hat Madeleine is wearing?  Ever since getting it for Christmas, she has kind of refused to take it off.  Here are a few photos taken over the past week:








Anyway, Madeleine wore her hat the entire time we Rowes enjoyed the various entertainments of New Year's Eve in our town, which made her easy to pick out in a crowd.  In fact, I think the pink hat helped immensely during a magic show we went to watch, because Madeleine was chosen out of all the kids in an incredibly crowded room to be the magician's assistant during one of his tricks:




This was like a DREAM COME TRUE for Madeleine.  All her life, she has been the kid desperately raising her hand, yearning to be chosen, but always overlooked, at magic shows.  Today, without even raising her hand, she was selected.  I think this might encourage her to NEVER TAKE THE PINK HAT OFF ever again.  In fact, Ethan and I had moved to the back side of the big, crowded room to allow for kids to see the magic without us blocking them.  From where I was sitting, I couldn't even see the magician himself.  But when I heard him call on "the girl with the pink hat," I immediately knew it had to be Madeleine.  After elbowing my way through the crowd I saw that, indeed, there she was, standing up in jacket and hat, performing her important assistantly duties.

In addition to the magic show, we Rowes enjoyed a storyteller and a really impressive marionette puppet show.  When the puppet show was over, the puppeteers offered to give a back stage tour to any interested kids, instructing them to form a line.  Within that announcement was a brief mention that the local hospital was also giving out free cowbells (WHY?!  WHY???!???) that could be picked up at the back of the auditorium on our way out.  Julia immediately opted out of the backstage tour, but when I mentioned it to Madeleine, she immediately scurried to the back of a very long line to wait.

JULIA: (watching the line not moving at all) Can we just go?
ME: Well, Madeleine wants to do the backstage tour.  Are you sure you don't want to do it with her?
JULIA: No thank you.
ME: Okay, well, we have to wait for her.  Unless you want me to see if she doesn't really want to wait this long.
JULIA: Okay, you can ask her.

I made my way across the auditorium to where Madeleine was standing in line.

ME: Honey, are you sure you want to wait in this long line?
MADELEINE: But, Mommy,  I *really* want a cowbell!
ME: This is the line for the backstage tour, honey.
MADELEINE: No!  They said there were cowbells!  They said "the BACK" for cowbells!
ME: The cowbells are over there.  This is the line for seeing the back of the puppet theater and checking out all the puppets and stuff.
MADELEINE: The cowbells are over there?  Where?
ME: At the back of the room.

Madeleine immediately stepped out of line and happily went to collect her free cowbell.  Silly me.  I guess I should have known that given the option of: a) getting on stage to see all the tricks of the puppet scenery and an up close view of the marionettes themselves, or b) a free cowbell, the unequivocal choice would be cowbell.  Totally.

So, now both kids have cowbells, which is awesome.  2017 is looking promising already!

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