We're Off to See the Wizard

OPEN WIDE: We started our day at the dentist. Both kids had six month checkups. CJ was complimented on his Superior Brushing Skills. According to the hygienist  he shines in comparison to his peers. Nice. :)

Annabelle asked the dentist whether or not she will need braces. He was very diplomatic. He said her teeth are still moving, so it's a little too early to tell, but that it was a definite possibility. Something to look forward to. ...

As you can see above, Annabelle did *not* like the taste of the "tooth vitamins."

As usual, we were a couple of minutes early to the dentist's neighborhood (Leschi, on the  western shore of Lake Washington, on the east side of First Hill), so we stopped at a park we love over there, Powell Barnett (named after the Leschi Improvement Council's organizer and first president).

Everything was wet and the kids were cold, but they had 10 minutes of fun nonetheless.

TALL TALE: Yesterday the kids read a passing reference about Paul Bunyan in one of their weekly Time for Kids pamphlets. I asked them if they were familiar with that folk tale and they both said 'no.' Oops. So today we fixed that by watching the wonderful 1958 Disney cartoon about the oversized lumberjack and his blue ox. (It brought back fond memories for me, as I recalled watching it while sitting on the gym/cafeteria floor at Lake Shore Elementary back in the early 1970s.) 

The story Paul Bunyan serves up all sorts of folk-lore-y information about why things are the way they are. For instance, did you know Paul dug the Missouri river so he could float logs he'd cut to the mill? And did you know waterfalls at Yellowstone served as his shower? Or that the Northern Lights are cause by Paul and Blue wrestling in Alaska? Fun stuff. 

The kids really enjoyed the cartoon and I am glad that I no longer have to feel guilty about the kids not knowing about Paul Bunyan.

THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ: A couple of days ago CJ saw a playbill for the Seattle Children's Theatre production of "The Wizard of Oz" and asked if we could go.

I told him we would be going next month, and that I already have tickets. In the meantime, however, we learned about another Wizard production not too far from home, in Shoreline. (The kids' science teacher's son is in the cast.)

The show starred 40 Shorewood High School kids, was accompanied by Shorewood's 26-piece orchestra, involved a stage crew of 30 and 150 costumes. Pretty ambitious - and they pulled it off nicely.

It was a two-plus hour production, sticking to the oh-so-familiar movie storyline pretty faithfully. It was thoroughly entertaining from opening line to the curtain falling. The kids loved the play. It brought Annabelle to tears twice, the first time when Dorothy's beloved Toto is taken away by the evil Miss Gulch, and the second time when Dorothy was leaving her trio of friends in Oz behind to return home.