Bowling with Brandy and a belly shot to boot!

After reading about our annual bowling fiasco, Brandy said she wanted in on some Kellogg family bowling action so we set up a date and, miraculously, made it to Stoneleigh Lanes twice in one year! Our timing was pretty rad because early last week they sent out another Groupon which we promptly scooped up. Who doesn't love half-price shoe rentals, lane rentals, and bowling alley pizza?

We started our morning at the BSO family concert. This one was Musical Roots: From Africa to America and featured an awesome percussion performance by the OrchKids and a few seriously amazing and super fun performances by local beat boxer, Shodekeh. I loved this song best and am thinking I need to order it from iTunes.

We went straight from the concert to the bowling alley (getting ourselves dressed that morning for those two back-to-back activities was a bit of a conundrum) to meet Brandy and Tim, sling some duckpins, and eat some pizza.

For those of you who have been harrassing me because I have posted very few belly shots (ahem, Autumn!) check out this pic in which my super huge belly dwarfs the miniscule little duckpin ball. I'm pretty sure I'd dwarf ten pin ball as well.

The adult-to-child ratio on this particular bowling fiasco was 4 to 1 which meant that the adults actually played a full game. I don't know the last time I played a whole game...it's been years for sure. Unfortunately, we had no idea how to keep beyond simply marking down the number of pins that we knocked over with each turn so my two spares were ignored. I mention this because I think that should we have been able to calculate in what to do with spares, I might not have come in dead last....

Eric came in at the opposite end of the score card befuddling us native Marylanders and putting us to shame. I grew up lobbing the occasional duckpin with my dad and so did Brandy and Tim, but Eric had never even heard of duckpin until he married me let alone lobbed one down a lane. In spite of being humbled by my Michigander husband, it was a super fun game and a super fun day in general.

We even ended up with a family picture, courtesy of Brandy! That makes two very rare shots in this one short post. Thanks B!

Photo courtesy of Brandy Washington

The BSO, a Greek festival, and trick-or-treating on The Ave

After a very long 2 weeks away, Eric is home again, and he made it back in time for a really fun weekend. On Saturday morning we had tickets to Wizards and Wands, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's first family concert of the season.  I had only bought two tickets since Eric's original flight had him arriving home on Saturday evening rather than Friday evening, but I was able to purchase a third ticket online on the morning of the performance for a seat directly behind the other two--perfectly serendipitous!

The highlight of the show was the performance put on by the Enchantment Theatre Company while the orchestra played Paul Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice, and fortunately, this performance followed the playing of Baba Yaga which the conductor, Ken Lam, introduced as a song written about a wicked old woman who kidnapped children and ate them. I cringed when he said that knowing that Hannah, sitting in the row in front of me with Eric, was no longer enjoying the show as a result of that comment. I thought we'd have to leave early but she made it through that song, and then the next one had actors from the theater company dressed up as enchanted broomsticks dancing around being silly, and that saved the day so we made it through the whole performance after all.

After the performance we walked across the street to the Greek festival for lunch. Earlier that morning Demetrios let me know that if I could resist the food vendors in the tent, the really good stuff was in the basement of the church, so we made straight for the church and chowed down on all Athenian shrimp and braised leg of lamb and dolmas (my favorite) and spanakopita and all sorts of other yumminess.

Since I didn't get a pic at the BSO, I busted out the camera phone at lunch and captured the fam striking a most attitude-laden pose.

After lunch I beelined for the honey puffs. Super yum. Hannah was happy with her little shortbread tart, which was good because it meant more honey puffs for me. 

We snuggled on the couch in front of a movie when we got home and then putzed around until it was time to trick-or-treat at the various merchants on The Avenue. Hannah decided to dress as Merida again, and Kylie came over dressed as Sleeping Beauty.

I wish I could remember the name of this store...it's been there forever and always has the best window dressings. The girls stopped to admire the various body parts, some skeleton, some mannequin, some unknown.

The chairs in front of Atomic Books were also a big hit. The comic book "treats" that the store gave out were a big hit with me since I was already wondering what we were going to do with all the candy we collected. A few of the comics were even age appropriate and were read multiple times today.

After ransacking every store for everything they had, we trudged home with cold noses and a heavy bag of candy. Hannah loved her first trick-or-treating experience and never even asked for any of the candy. I thought about letting her have a piece, but since she didn't ask, I figured why offer? Eric will take it to work with him tomorrow and share it with his sailors, and I will sleep well knowing that I let Hannah participate in a quirky, fun, traditional American activity without having to sacrifice her health in the process. Everybody wins.

It was really fun-filled day, and although Hannah and I would have had fun no matter what, I'm glad Eric made it back the night before because him being there doubled the awesomeness of the day.

Hannah's first visit to the symphony!

We skipped our regular Friday morning swim this week and went to the Meyerhoff instead to see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra perform Prokofiev alongside a Cinderella puppet show. They have four family concerts each season performed on a Saturday morning every other month (next up in February is LIFE: A Journey Through Time).  They take each of these family concerts and break it down even farther to tailor it to specific age groups which they perform on the Wednesday and Friday before the Saturday concert. Tiny Tots is the shortest program at 35 minutes and is tailored to kids in pre-k and kindergarten; Hannah might be a bit young by their standards, but I figured if she can sit through an hour of Dora, she'd last at the symphony for 35 minutes.

I was right. She sat, riveted, on the edge of her seat throughout the whole show. It probably helps that we pulled a Cinderella book out of a hand-me-down bag a couple months ago, and it's quickly become one of her favorite books (though not mine since it's the Disney version based on the movie and therefore poorly written).  She also has a book out of the library right now called Musical Max, and at the end, Max becomes the conductor of an orchestra.

We got lucky too: we spotted two of Hannah's neighborhood pals as soon as we walked in, Julia and Sophia, so we had company.  After the show I snapped a pic of the girls looking quite mature and cultured in their theater seats.

I really wanted some sort of monumental first-time-at-the-symphony pic, but the place was a certified madhouse with school groups swarming everywhere, and I wasn't sure what the most monumental backdrop would be anyway since I couldn't very well put her in front of the building and then stand back far enough for anyone to be able to tell what the building is and still recognize Hannah as anything more than a speck.  I ended up sneaking us back into the lobby after the show (they diverted us out the back door) and just taking a pic in front of the their holiday decorations.  It's not really the backdrop I was hoping for, but it's better than nothing.  Quite serious looking isn't she?

The Hannah's-first-visit-to-the-symphony picture.