June 24, 2011

rainy afternoon

My children spent the better part of the day Friday preparing to put on a puppet show in our living room. In fact, other than meals and a twenty minute break during which Evelyn acted out Moses leading his people out of Egypt in song and with the aid of her Calico Critters, that's pretty much all they did all day long.

This mammoth undertaking required two solid hours of creating a large cast of puppets using tongue depressors, paper and a staggering amount of glue (really, thank goodness for Magic Eraser, otherwise I'm not sure my table would ever have been usable again) and then the building of a puppet theater which involved a cereal box, three pages of scrapbooking paper, Modge Podge and an Xacto knife.
And also some parental supervision, due to the sharp blade that was involved.
Notice how it opens on the side so that scenery can be changed? The play involved four seasons so we had to be able to change the background, tree and the apron of the stage to reflect this. No mean feat I tell ya.
In case you hadn't guessed, Evelyn picked the color of the curtains. Naturally.

When they were ready they led me to my seat, the best in the house. I knew it was the best because on it was a slip of paper that said "best vew". I was seated with a contingency of toys on either side and was then treated to the rules of the theater.
I like that they say "moving about" here. Apparently they are now British.
I flagrantly broke this rule and ate a huge bowl of yogurt throughout act one. But they turned a blind eye.
Notice that while glass cups are not allowed, coffee mugs are. They obviously knew that no coffee would be a deal breaker for mom.
I followed this rule and relied on natural light. For the sake of the actors, of course.

The play turned out to be a word for word reenactment of the entire book of Bone volume nine. But after two "intermisens" we had only made it though chapter one. At that point we broke for the afternoon and went outside for some fresh air. But not, of course, before I promised to watch the rest of the play at an as yet to be determined future date.
Seriously, who needs television when you have kids?