ESY - 2nd Trip to Sesame Place: Imagination Movers

 One of our kids' favorite shows is the Imagination Movers on Disney.  I have to admit that the show is pretty good for a Disney production.  They played 3 separate hour-long shows at Sesame Place today.  We made it to the 6:30 showing thinking that our kids would love it.  They were actually very fun...a lot of dancing, they actually played their instruments, lots of solos, very legit stuff (I was actually amazed at this).  They came up into the crowd and got the kids to dance and one of them, Rich, even let a little girl strum his guitar during one of the songs.  I thought it was a very good show; definitely worth the $10 it cost us to attend....at least so we thought...

I would have to say that, at least at times, all of us had a great time...if you do the math.  Matthew loved the whole show (100%), I loved the whole show (100%), Colleen loved the whole show (100%), Christopher loved about 20% of the show...the rest of the time he whined and cried that he wanted to go home.  So it ranked in at 80% fun for us as a family.  That's still a B. It was kind of loud, in his defense, but it was still lame.  I was able to get pictures of the boys dancing and cheering during the show.

 

 Then, after Christopher received a consequence for acting like a complete lunatic after the show, we talked about it and decided that we shouldn't let Matthew suffer for Christopher's bad behavior, so we took them for some rides.  Christopher was not allowed to have anything to drink or any popcorn while we were there as his consequence (you'd think that we ripped his arms off and beat him with them whenever we told him "No, because you lost that privilege when you were screaming like a nut and throwing a fit after the show was over.").  Matthew, as you know if you follow this blog at all, has absolutely no interest in rides of any kind.  We kind of forced him to ride Sunny Day Carousel...which he hated.  He screamed for the first half of the ride, but calmed...although not enough to actually enjoy it.  He had a vice-like grip on my shirt to the point where I had trouble breathing!  We got through it though and he actually wanted to do it again!  But we moved on to other rides.  We then moved on to Grover's World Twirl where we ride in teacups that are whipped around and spinning throughout the ride. (Note: the park is catered for young children, so none of the rides are ridiculous as far as speed and high-flying craziness).  Both boys enjoyed that ride a lot.  We went on that ride three times!  The first pic below is Matthew on the carousel and the second two are the boys on the World Twirl.  It was fun.  Then Colleen took Christopher on "Flying Fish" ride, sort of like a kids' helicopter or airplane ride, but with flying fish with Elmo faces.  He loved that one too.  You had to push a button on the fish to get it to elevate.  That was Christopher's job and he was all over it.  This is quite a landmark day for Christopher as far as riding rides are concerned.  He's usually very reluctant to try them, but he's been willing (with a bit of social encouragement) to give new stuff a try...and he's liked most of it.

And finally the mist stations...Christopher = fan....Matthew = not so much

First Half of Our Summer Break, Part 6 -- St. Michael's Fair

As we're a family always looking to keep our kids as busy and entertained as possible, we visited the St. Michael Fair during it's two-week stay.  Here are some random photos taken during our 2 trips to that....extravaganza (?).  I would love to have had more pics of  Matthew on some rides, but he was, again, a less-than-willing participant.  He's definitely the laid-back, although I'm not sure he's going to actually be as much laid back as he is bull-headed and more....stationary (?), of our two children. We were able to get him to ride the kiddie train with Nana Marianne, but that was about it.  Us: "Matthew, do you want to go on __________ [insert name of ride here]?"  Matthew's reply reminded me of that baby on the Capitol One commercials with Jimmy Fallon who repeats "No" with every one of Fallon's suggestions.  But, again, he was very content just to sit back, chill, and, at least I'd like to think, people watch (as this is the most entertaining thing to do at any carnival, fair, mall, et. al.  And for the record, he didn't like the train...just thought I'd throw that out there.

Those eyes are killers, man...love them.

 It was much more of a challenge getting Christopher to get in tow with the goings on of a fair..getting on the rides.  Contrary to what people might think about him being a jump-in-and-fly kind of kid, he is quite the contrary.  He's very nervous about trying new things and very content to do the same things over and over again (he loves the carousel and if it were up to him, we'd just ride that over and over and over again!)  Thankfully on our first trip to the St. Mike's Fair we met up with Colleen's cousin, Emily, and her nephew, Ben.  Just with Ben's wanting to go on different rides, he encouraged Christopher to "save face" and/or "keep up with the Hendersons" if you will.  He loved every ride that him and Ben rode and, thus, on our second trip to the fair, he was more than willing to go on these rides on his own.  So instead of crying and screaming about being scared to try the new rides, we evolved into him crying and screaming because he had to actually wait in line (a concept not new to Christopher, but one might think otherwise on this occasion).

Huge Slide

Big obstacle course thing..he loved it

Obligatory carousel rides

This was actually very cool, but the lighting we goofy and I forgot to change the settings on my camera and I got this blurry shot, but it was a mechanical shark instead of a mechanical bull.  Very cool I have to admit

First Half of Our Summer Break Part 5 -- Fewer things are in the world are better than some playtime in the sprinkler in 100+ degree weather

We took advantage of some idle time in the extremely hot weather over the last couple of weeks.  20-minutes of playing in the sprinkler while Matthew was out for the count napping!  I think it was time well spent.

I'm not exactly sure what he was trying to do here, but I'm more than sure the sprinkler won

I would call this a successful venture

First Half of Our Summer Break, Part 4 - Sesame Place Trip 1VJust

 Here are some pics from our first trip to Sesame Place this year.  This is the first time I've been to Sesame Place during season (those who follow might recall the Christmas season photos from last year), and, I have to say, I was impressed with how quickly and fluidly things went...and it wasn't over-sized and ridiculous as I thought it might be given the trendy and tourist nature of these sorts of theme parks.  It was a nice trip for both boys.  Matthew got to get out and play even though he seemed less than interested in many of the rides and such things that were appropriate for his age and size.  He was more interested in the small playground and padded building block play area there.  He was very content with those two areas.  

 There is an actual replica of the Sesame Street set...Christopher absolutely has to make it to the fire engine every time we go.  

at Cookie Mountain

at the mist machine

Vapor Trail

Chillin' ...very content just to hang out...until we got to Big Bird's Court.  Here he really let it loose!

Christopher at Snuffy's Slides.  I just thought this ended up being a pretty cool picture