Annabelle's altered play program cover. She scribbled out the child on the cover and drew herself.
42: We started the day with a biographical story. "We know him," CJ said upon seeing the cover of Jackie Robinson - A Life of Determination" from the People of Character series. It told the story of how Robinson, born in 1919, began his life as a child born to a sharecropping family in Georgia. From an early age, it was clear that Jackie was an exceptional athlete. He was a standout in high school and afterward, at UCLA, where he became the first African-American to earn varsity letters in baseball, football, basketball and track. Unfortunately, he couldn't finish college due to financial constraints.
After UCLA, he moved to Hawaii and played semi pro football until WWII broke out. He was a second lieutenant in the Army from 1942-1944, when he got into trouble for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus. He was arrested and court martialed, but received an honorable discharge.
After the Army he played in the Negro Leagues, but wasn't there for long. In 1945, he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball by joining the Dodgers.
After we finished the story, I told the kids that we'd be going to see the play "Jackie and Me" at the Seattle Children's Theater today. That made them happy. :) CJ said he wanted to play the part of Jackie. I said that was nice, but the cast was already set. He took it well, saying, "And P.S. I'm white skinned. And I'm not a grown up."
Good points.
We got to the theater a good half hour early and our reward was front and center seats. Score! The play had a lot more dialogue and a lot less humor than other plays we have seen there, but no surprise - the subject matter was serious, and there were some poignant moments (sniffle, sniffle).
The kids paid close attention for the entire 2 hours of the play. When the lights came up, some cast members came back on stage to take questions for the audience. That always makes me a bit Nervous, because I know CJ and Annabelle's hands are going to shoot up first and who knows what might come out of their mouths. I was just leaning over to CJ to ask him to run any questions he might have by me when I hear, "You, there in the front row!" says the man on stage. Yup, CJ's hand had shot up first. CJ's question wasn't about baseball, or civil rights, or Jackie Robinson. No, no, no. He asked, (paraphrasing slightly and shortened significantly), "Don't you think that if you visited the past, there's a chance that it could change the future?"
That's right, CJ was worried about the cosmic ramifications of the pretend time travel in the story. That's my CeeJ. After the play, we had to go move the car to another spot (for fear of getting a ticket). Then we headed back to the center. We popped into the Children's Museum. There, the kids first hit "Cog City," which is all about levers and tubes and conveyor belts. From there, they made a beeline to the International Village, bypassing every other country in favor of the Japan exhibit. They both definitely have a thing for the Japanese culture.
We also checked out a new exhibit exploring sizes ...
And they're just starting to build a new permanent exhibit featuring LEGOs.
From the Children's Museum, we ripped on over to the Space Needle. Here's a photo of the kids on the way up.
And here are the Pacific Science Center arches as seen from the golden elevator ...
We enjoyed beautiful blue skies and not-too-bad wind on the observation deck.There was a gorgeous view of Lake Union (see the lovely new South Lake Union Park?).
We could see ships and ferries on Puget Sound ...
And, of course, we had to check out downtown and the stadiums.
After descending the Needle, we ventured to the fountain for the kids' first splashdown of 2011. 
CJ quickly made some friends and he played with the boys for over an hour. It was great!
(In the photo he's the one semi sitting up, in the middle.)Annabelle hung with the guys, too, as well as flitted about by herself.
Here's a video of the fountain fun. Annabelle has a pink shirt on and CJ is shirtless, with long pants on. ...All in all, it was a fun 5 hours at Seattle Center.
EARTH AND SKY: High above our heads, and very early this a.m., Endeavour, piloted by Commander Mark Kelly, made a Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, or 'backflip.' It had to rotate 360 degrees backward in order to enable space station astronauts Dmitry Kondratyev, Paolo Nespoli and Cady Coleman to take high resolution pictures of the shuttle’s heat shield. About a half hour after the flip, shuttle Endeavour docked with the ISS for the last time ever.
Meanwhile, back on earth, yesterday the shuttle Atlantis made its final journey from Orbiter Processing Facility-1 to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's a step in the shuttle's processing for the STS-135 - the FINAL space shuttle flight ever.
Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller
I, too, have always been bothered by the time-travel paradox. What if you went back in time and killed your father?
ReplyDeleteGreat photos from the Needle! and love that Children's Museum.