The Wizard of Oz arrives in Philadelphia

We drove to Philadelphia this past weekend. The main reason for the visit was to attend the first performance involving the newest thespian in the family - Alex played one of the munchkins in the Wizard of Oz presented by the Wolf Performing Arts Center. Due to Grandma Mary's presence (another contributing factor to our visit), Abby and I were able to attend the Saturday night show along with Rach and Andrew. While the show was a bit long, we all had a great time, and Alex appeared to be born to play a munchkin at this point in her life.

We also had lots of fun hanging out with the relatives in Philly. On Saturday, we went to the Smith Memorial Playground which is an amazing place.

Cool Slideshows!

Nowadays, most playgrounds are pretty boring since all of the interesting (i.e. dangerous) installations have been removed, but the Smith Playground has all sorts of cool stuff like the big wooden slide pictured above that Andrew, Margaret and I used for racing. Margaret was too young for most of the stuff, but the family munchkin was able to climb all over the place. Best of all, depending on your point of view about these things, we got to see a performance by Ronald McDonald that accompanied a donation made by the Ronald McDonald fund to the park. Actually, only Andrew and I watched most of the show as everyone else quickly lost interest. Come to think of it, Andrew was the only real fan, but he clapped so enthusiastically after each trick that I couldn't bring myself to take him away. He had also strategically positioned himself on some stairs right in front of the show so that to extract him, I would have had to say, "Umm, excuse me Ronald... Andrew, c'mon let's go." Couldn't bring myself to do it.

During this visit, Margaret showed a great deal more interest in her cousins than she has in the past. For instance, while watching a Muppet Show DVD, some skit drew gales of laughter from the cousins. Now, Margaret isn't sophisticated enough for almost anything on TV, much less the high-brow humor of the Muppet Show, but she duly chimed in with her own guffaws. Margaret thinks Andrew is quite the clown as seen during the trip that they shared in our back seat to Smith Park. Margaret kept grinning at Andrew and looking at me with a somewhat incredulous expression as if to say "Can you believe this guy?" while I threatened to toss Andrew out of the window if he fulfilled his own threat to throw out one of Margaret's toys. Lizzie, the youngest cousin, is the one that, I think, Margaret finds the most interesting. Margaret would watch and mimic her including, according to my mom, an episode where Lizzie repeatedly ran back and forth across the living room. After watching and absorbing that activity for a few circuits, Margaret started "running" with her. This type of behavior, I suspect, is the beginning of a long era of worship devoted to the cousins especially the youngest one.

Cool Slideshows!