Wow! We went to see Mary Poppins yesterday afternoon and it was amazing. It’s the first stage show that we’ve taken the kids to with the exception of Disney On Ice a few years ago. I thought Bridie might get a bit toey as she’s not the best at the movies. Instead though they all sat spellbound through the whole show. Mary Poppins flew directly above our heads with Beth waving madly. Of course we bought the cd and played it all the way home and in the car again this morning. There’s nothing like lifting spirits in the car with a cd of showtunes. There was a heap of new songs that weren’t in the movie which were a great addition. Matt Lee (the judge from So You Think You Can Dance) played the Dick Van Dyke part of Bert the chimney sweep and he stole the show, he was just fantastic. I can highly recommend taking the kids to see it though it is on the pricey side for a whole family. Still, we don’t go on holidays much so doing it once in a while isn’t too bad.
 Tuesday was a day off school as it was Melbourne Cup Day. As usual I won nothing. We went down to Dad and Helens along with my sister and her family. Helen took a few photos of all the grandkids together which I’ll put on here when I get a copy. Beth kept raising her hand in the air for her photo, she decided that she would be the statue of liberty this time! She’s so funny!
Yesterday we all started the day in fine spirits. Paul came to see Mary Poppins but said he’d have to meet us in the city. We set off bright and early and caught the 8.35am train into the city. Bev and John came too. I wanted to take the kids to see the Titanic Exhibition at the museum as it’s closing this weekend. They were all excited about catching the train. Beth was in good form, looking out the window and giving us all commentary about each and every thing that she saw. A ticket inspector came to check our tickets. He was of indian descent. Beth looked at him and said “Look it’s President Obama, hello President!” He smiled when he saw my companion card and waved and said hi back. This continued all the way to the city. The redhead that Beth saw out the window was Julia Gillard and the guy who got on the train with headphones on was Jesse McCarthy. When we got out and walked through the gardens to the museum she saw an asian woman walking towards her and called out “Hi Lucy” as in Lucy Liu from Charlies Angels.
I was telling my friend Bec this morning and she laughed as she said William did a similar thing at the dentist the other day. When he left he said thankyou to the dental nurse who has seen him. Then he turned to the asian nurse and said “Conichiwah” and bowed 3 times! Neither of our kids are racist but if you didn’t know them you might think they are. Last time we were at Sensational Kids Rod wrote a sentence on the board and asked Beth to tell him what was wrong with it. The sentence went something like this “The black duck hates swimming in the pond yesterday.” Now the answer was clearly because the tense was wrong. When he asked Beth she said “because the duck is black.” We cracked up laughing as she meant it in all innocence.
The titanic exhibition was good as each of the kids had a passenger boarding pass with names of passengers. At the end they could check if they had died or not. Bill enjoyed it the most with a lot of it going over the girls heads. Still, they seemed to enjoy it. Beth particularly liked the huge block of ice that was on display as an iceberg. A little too much as she kept licking it. We had a picnic lunch there then went off to the theatre.
All in all we had a wonderful day. One of the songs had a saying that I loved. I’ve heard the one about reaching for the moon but this one was something along the lines of instead of reaching for the stars, reach for the world and the stars will come along. I love the idea of reaching as far as you can. You may just surprise yourself. Oh, and I think I want to take up tapdancing lessons too!
