Last Friday, I had the pleasure of taking my boys and my mother to see the Atlanta Ballet’s Nutcracker at the Fox Theatre.
Sigh. It was so lovely. I mean, just look at this set:
Of course, being boys, they weren’t exactly thrilled at the thought of being dragged to a ballet. But dangit — I am going to instill some culture into these little monkeys if it kills them! Life isn’t all Xbox and Legos and wrestling matches and softball games. They tend to forget that, here in this “house of blue” but I take very seriously my responsibility to expose them to the finer, gentler things in life, to prepare them for the wives and daughters they’ll have some day.
(Because I’m already declaring it so: they will give me at least one or two granddaughters!)
You can tell how thrilled Zach is in this shot:
But you know what? Both of them said to me later that they actually kind of liked it. And they liked the Russian dancers the most. They also loved the Fox Theatre (who wouldn’t?) with the night-sky ceiling complete with drifting clouds and sparkling stars, the massive lounge-style restrooms with private phone booths, the antique elevators — all of it was interesting to them, and beautiful to me.
They also enjoyed posing with this giant nutcracker:
(And here’s a bonus silly shot I played with on Picnik.com. Zach was sneezing and Eli has demon eyes!
But their very favorite part of our field trip came after the ballet, when we visited another Atlanta landmark:
What’ll ya have? What’ll ya have?
We had chili dogs, onion rings and F.O’s (frosted orange milkshakes — like a Creamsicle in a cup.) Eli really did enjoy himself even though the goofball’s putting on a sad face in this last shot:
You can tell he’s trying not to laugh!
What a fun day we had. I wish we could do it again tomorrow!