Zoo Day!
Fun trip to the zoo recently. It was a perfectly beautiful, warm but not hot, day in so cal. G loves the zoo! It was a great day.

G always runs to visit the "stinkingoes" first. She wanted mommy in the picture with her this time. Notice that she has her leg up, her impression of the birds :-)
Our traditional photo with the gorilla statue! Georgie was so happy to make it down this part of the play structure. She's tried a few times but always asked for help because she got scared. This time, sweet success!!! And, of course, no Crowell trip to anywhere would be complete without at least one of these in front of something G finds impressive ;-)

Show time
We've caught a few shows recently. First, Martin Short last weekend. It was mostly his SNL characters done live. Not a laugh riot but a pleasantly funny performance.

Then, this last weekend my mom treated me to a showing of the Dinner Detective as my birthday gift. It was done at one of the local hotels which was nice and convenient. The show itself was so, so silly but in a fun way. I really enjoyed it and the food was tasty. Happy birthday to me :-)

Sesame Street Live
I mentioned to a friend that we were going to see the new Elmo show this past weekend and he expressed surprise. Why? I wondered. Apparantly Sesame Street is considered by some to be too juvenile for a 4.5 yr old. Ummm, nope. G is still a little girl. I don't have any intention of impeding her progress but I have no desire for her to grow up too quickly either. Anyway, having said that, G still likes Sesame Street and gentle things of that sort. And, I'm happy for it.

As usual, G was excited about going to see a show and she loved the little Elmo set I found for her. They had a cute pre-show thing that allowed for tons of photo ops and activities for the little ones. We were happily surprised to run into one of her little friends from preschool there which made it even more fun for G. She immediately grabbed her little hand so they could explore the Play Zone area together. So cute!

During the show she danced and sang and really had a good time. We ended up sitting in the front so she had lots of character interaction which was awesome. The show itself, Elmo Makes Music, was one of the best children's shows I've seen. They did different kinds of music like rap and disco. The disco portion was particularly funny featuring Bert dressed in a white 3-piece suit a la John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever. Hysterical. G didn't catch any of those references of course but the parents certainly did :-)

Glamour Shots with G
Georgie loved doing this! She was in heaven. I tried to look like I wasn't in pain. Not sure if I was successful. I did actual Glamour Shots with my mom once about 15 or 20 yrs ago and we had lots of fun. These were done at a place called Attraction Studio in West Covina. It was a fun, albeit somewhat pricey, addition to our Mother's Day weekend a few weeks ago.


This one is my favorite of the group

Street smart

Perfect in pink!

Les Miserables
Another Broadway hit I'd never seen. When I saw it was at the Segerstrom Center I was excited and really wanted to see it. My mom say it in NY years ago so I asked my friend Candy to join me. She was a Les Mis virgin as well so we were ready. We decided to get dinner at Mortons which is literally a 2 min drive to the theater. Perfect. As it turns out, between Father's Day and our anniversary dinners I'd eaten my annual allotment of steak so I went with a surf and turf spare rib and scallop combo and we shared a side of creamed spinach... OMG! It was delish. Of course I think I could have easily made a meal out of their bread only. It was this amazing giant onion loaf. I think it might be the best bread I've eaten in my entire life. Dessert (yes, don't judge me, Candy likes dessert ;-) was a chocolate souffle. Fantastic!!!

After we stuffed ourselves silly with rich food we headed off to the play. I've never been to the Segerstrom for a show. Its a beautiful theater. I was a bit nervous about our seats which were in the front row. I've never sat in the front row before but when I bought them the choice was front row or very, very back of orchestra. As it turned out, our seats were awesome! It was so neat to be so close to the stage and really be able to see the detail of the costumes and the facial expressions. The only drawback was that we were so close we could actually see the microphone headsets they were wearing which was a bit distracting but, overall, I think a fair trade off.

The show itself was great! Probably most people are familiar with the story of Jean Valjean who, after serving 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving nephew, searches for peace and redemption. Its an amazing musical and the production was wonderful. The sets, the performances, everything was so good. Its now on my short list of fav shows. It's not as good as Phantom, but it was close :-)

That thing on the plate in front of us is the souffle... yikes!

Little girl blue

A thoroughly modern princess

The Joys of Georgiana: Georgiana is kind
I wrote already that I attended a mother's day tea with G at her school last friday. It was a lovely day. I was surprised when the "young 3 yr old" class teacher, Mrs Hood, came up to me as I was leaving and handed me a picture in a little hand crafted frame. It was a photo of G holding hands with a little tiny girl who joined the school just a month or so ago. Mrs Hood went on to explain that the reason she took the picture was because Georgie is always so kind to the younger kids in her class. She said she's very gentle and kind to them and so the little ones really like her and she was happy to have been able to capture that in a photo. Ahh, so sweet.

She went on to explain that there is a little boy in the 3 yr old class, T, who although he's been in the school since September has had a hard time getting along socially. Because of that many of the children didn't want to play with him and he often ended up playing by himself. This did not surprise me. G had mentioned a few times throughout the year that T had a hard time, would sometimes hit the other kids and was kind of "mean". And I'd noticed a couple of times his general unruliness at school activities but honestly I never thought too much about it.  Growing socially is one of the things kids are supposed to do in preschool.

Mrs Hood said that she wasn't really sure what had led up to it if anything but, that about a month before, G seemed to take an interest in T. She started going over and talking to him a bit as he played by himself and eventually, in true Georgie style, grabbed his little hand. Mrs Hood said that at first T seemed a bit confused by G's actions but he warmed up to it really quickly and actually responded to G kindly in turn. I guess that after G started playing with him, some of the other kids joined in and T is now getting along much, much better. She then took my hand and said "you know, your daughter is a very special gir. She has a very kind heart and a gentle spirit."

I almost cried. Ok, I admit it, I actually did cry a little. Best. Mother's Day Gift. Ever.