The Nutcracker!

I have loved The Nutcracker ballet ever since I was like 6 or 7 & my then grandmother took me to see it. I've dragged Jeremiah to it once or twice and he really can't hardly take it & is thrilled that having a daughter finally old enough to go with me means that he will never ever have to suffer through it again! I'd been planning on taking Callie for more than a year, so when I found out there was a community production of it in Boulder, NV which was way less expensive than a professional ballet, my friends & I decided to take our daughters & have a girls' night. Callie & I had the best time! We went up to Henderson in the afternoon to do a small amount of shopping & we met up with my good friend Tana & her girls Corinne & Ali (who were going with us) for dinner at Pei Wei. Summer & Kenadee, and Kate & Kiera both had a ward party to go to so they came up & met us at the theater. Callie had talked about seeing The Nutcracker (and about our girls' night) for weeks & weeks & was SO excited! I wasn't sure how much she'd actually like it though because a week before there was a live version (as opposed to Barbie or Carebears) on tv & Jeremiah told her what it was & she didn't believe that that was what it was since she'd only seen cartoon versions. I think she even told him it was boring! Anyway, from the moment they turned down the lights she was mesmerized. Seriously! Permagrin for like the first 20 minutes! About 45 minutes into it she said she loved it & asked if we could watch it again. I said sure - maybe next year & she said no, right after this! After the performance we were able to take pictures with some of the cast (who even gave all our girls flowers!) - they especially loved meeting "Clara". After The Nutcracker we took the girls to McDonald's & had ice cream. On the way to McD's Callie was on the phone with Jeremiah & he asked if The Nutcracker was good & she said, "Heck yeah it was good!" After ice cream Callie talked all about our girls' night for almost 30 minutes. She finally fell asleep on the drive home at 11:30! I'm so glad she had such a great girls' night! Oh, & one more cute thing is that some of the cast who played Clara's friends at the Christmas party in the first act were the ones handing out programs before the ballet began so since one of the girls handed Callie her program she treats that thing like gold & tells us how special it is!