Thursday, July 8, 2010

Annie

The mosquitoes were seriously eating me alive. It started with a little ankle itch that I hoped was just my shoestring of my softball cleat rubbing against my leg, but soon I knew as my entire exposed limbs were itching as if I was on fire, that I was in the middle of a mosquito colony. Yet, I stayed put. I stayed quite still. I stayed very quiet. And I scratched and scratched and scratched until I couldn't really feel my legs at all, just burning. Why would anyone put herself through this? Well, I was also enjoying about the most wonderful, magical evening of my life thus far. It all started when my softball game ended. (A game in which I took a big bad hopper to the knee, and am now sporting a neat looking swollen bruise with softball stitching and all! - most importantly, I made the play.) Anyway, after my game I joined the rest of my family at the nearby playground. My daughter, Elaina (6), and I kept hearing the soundtrack to Annie being sung. When Elaina realized that a cast of the musical, Annie, was having their dress rehearsal right over the hill at an outdoor amphitheater, her eyes literally LIT UP! Her smile was ear to ear as she asked me, "MAMA! Can we go watch????!!!" Of course we could. So my husband takes the rest of the kids home in one car, and Elaina and I headed over the hill. To our,and especially Elaina's wonder, the cast was very close to the beginning of the musical. We sneak into a couple seats and proceed to have practically our own private showing of the entire musical. Elaina was enthralled. She kept looking over at me with her huge brown eyes and messy playground hair and saying, "mom, this is awesome!!!" And she would practically whisper the word awesome because she was so excited at this whole situation happening. She began singing and humming along. She told me when it was her favorite part - numerous parts are actually her "favorite part." When they would be changing the scenes, she would watch very closely and when she recognized what scene was coming next, she would start bouncing her knees and look at me and say, "OH this is the part when...!!!" I watched her, and I watched the show, and I watched her some more. She is the most fun, sweet, life-loving girl ever, and I am so blessed to have her. I thank God profusely tonight, for that magical, unexpected moment. And every time I scratch a mosquito bite, I will remember it. also I don't want to forget: -today charlie hurt his big toe, a little blood. He loves to have his boo boos kissed and he was pretty upset. So, after I kissed it, I looked to the kids watching tv in the next room and asked them to come please kiss Charlie's toe to make him feel better since he was still fussing quite a bit. Each child came up one at a time, kissed the toe, and said something to the effect of, "Oh little Charlie, are you ok, poor baby..." First Scotty, then Jack, then Ben. When Elaina finally came up to bat she looked at the toe, put her hand to her lips, kissed her fingers and blew the kiss toward the toe. Then she looked sort of sideways at me, and gave me an eyebrow shrug. I nearly died laughing.

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