Babes in Toyland

Ross and Elizabeth are taking part in our little theater guild's performance of Babes in Toyland. They were allowed to choose the toys they wanted to be. As you can see, Ross chose to be a baseball, and Elizabeth chose to be a china doll.

I wasn't quite sure what to do about the baseball costume, but it came together pretty well with fabric, foam, and red duct tape. Luckily, we had a Mulan costume from last Halloween, but I didn't know how I wanted to turn Elizabeth's blond hair black. Thanks to a suggestion from my friend Emily, we found that FamilyFun.com (my favorite costume idea website) shows how to make an Asian princess wig out of black tights, bubble wrap, a hot glue gun, silk flowers, and chop sticks. It's hard to see in the pictures, but it turned out great.

The kids don't have speaking parts - they just walk in a toy parade and wave to the audience two different times and then participate in funny, choreographed battle scene. Then for the last half hour they just stand on stage and act scared, mad, surprised, etc. It's such a great production! Last night was opening night, and it runs through Sunday afternoon.

Earlier in the week I was giving the kids directions on where to go to meet me as soon as the play was over so we wouldn't become separated. Ross said, "Well, Mom... it might take a little while because I'll probably be signing autographs afterward." I think my humble little boy has seen his Uncle Ben perform a couple of times.

Mallory's new trick

Mallory has just learned to wave. In this video, she doesn't do it for long. She waves ALL the time to anyone who will humor her. At the mall the other day she was the welcome committee for all of the shoppers. Just about every time she sees my sister Andrea she starts waving. It's always fun when they learn new tricks!