A Month of Fun Firsts!

So! Turns out March has been (and continues to be) a jam-packed, fun-filled month including lots of firsts! Here's a quick run-down of those firsts: playing my bass at Crossroads, seeing an African drum & dance group with Ezra, taking Ezra to the Ringling Brothers circus, meeting Ezra's newest cousin, Allie Jo, and visiting the International Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Not to mention the fact that Ezra and I will be leaving tomorrow morning for Tennessee where we will spend several days with my grandparents who we haven't seen since Ezra was 6 weeks old! Phew!

The Bass
For those of you who attend Crossroads and are wondering why you didn't see me play, it's probably because you are not a fifth or sixth grader. I played in the Area 56 band and was thrilled to have the opportunity to play again. I will continue to play on a monthly basis and I welcome the regular practice. I hadn't played my bass in about three years! That's just wrong.

African Music
I found out from a local parenting magazine that the Clifton Cultural Arts Center has a family showtime once a month and it's free! This month they were showcasing the Bi-Okoto drum and dance group. Ezra and I decided to check it out and we were glad we did. Lots of fun with child and parent participation....and for those of you who know how much I love dancing, you understand why it was fun for me.

The Circus
I found out from the same parenting magazine that the Ringling Brothers Circus was coming to town. Ezra seemed to be the appropriate age to justify purchasing tickets and taking him. We had a blast! We showed up early so that we could mingle with the performers on the floor (this is something everyone was allowed to do.) We got to see clowns and acrobats up close and they did some small performances for us. Very cool. As it got close to the start of the show, we were all asked to make our way to our seats. It was pretty crowded so I told Michael I would just follow him. We saw our section number (210) painted on the wall above our section while we were on the floor so we started heading in that direction. We found our row and our seats and I turned around and was astonished at how great our seats were! As is usually the case for these Hutchins, we had purchased the cheapest tickets we could get so I was certain that we would be in the nose-bleeders. But, there we were! The front row on the ring was A and we were in N. Not too bad...and I laughingly declared as much out loud! "Wow! These seats are a lot better than I thought they would be!" "Um, excuse me," came a polite man's voice. "What section are you tickets for?" "210," I replied, pointing up to the number above our section. "Uh, this is actually 110," he said, with an apologetic smile. Fortunately, we hadn't even sat down yet. I cracked up and we continued our march up the mountain. Upon arrival at our seats, I observed that with an energetic jump, I could have touched the ceiling with my fingers...Ah, yes, this is definitely more our style.... We encouraged ourselves with the fact that we could see everything that was going on at once. If we had been down on the side of the ring, we would only have seen one small part of the show....at least that's what we told ourselves... It was a pretty fantastic show. Of course, they don't allow you to bring in your own food and drinks (fortunately, I didn't try to test this policy as they check bags!) so we had to buy some drinks etc. We had grabbed a quick bite to eat pre-show but you can't come to the circus without getting cotton candy ($12...but it included a cheap circus hat) and, of course, Ezra was thirsty so we got some lemonade in a reusable water bottle ($10.) Insane! But this is why we bought the cheap tickets so we could afford the rest of the circus (we had payed $10 for parking!) Lol! On our way home at the end of the night, our route happened to take us right by where the circus train was parked. So, despite how late it was for Ezra (9:30pm) we hopped out and snapped the best photo of the night. Ezra still says this was his favourite part of the night....Here's a little video of the pre-show experience we had:



The Cousin
My brother and his wife welcomed their second child, Allie Jo, to the world about a week and a half ago. She is my parents' third grandchild and this was much cause for celebration! Ezra and I headed up to meet her this past Friday. All of my family lives in the same area in Michigan and we had not been up since Christmas so it was nice to get to see everyone again. It always amazes me how tiny newborns are. Allie weighed just a bit over 7 pounds and was 21 inches long. I was flabbergasted further by the fact that Ezra was 6 pounds 9 oz., 21 inches long when he was born so he was tinier! Unbelievable. Ezra and I had talked about the possibility of him getting to hold her. When I had my camera ready, he was completely uninterested (probably because he was also seeing his cousin, Emma Jane, for the first time since Christmas...they were more interested in playing chase.) Then a couple days later, they stopped by Mom and Dad's house and my camera was upstairs when Ezra decided he wanted to hold Allie...and, of course, it was the sweetest thing ever. Allie was, naturally, sleeping and Ezra kept giving her gentle, sweet kisses and whispering, "I love you, Allie Jo....good night...have a good sleep, honey." So cute.

Ezra also had a fun day out with Poppio while we were there. Poppio got up early on a Saturday morning (not his favourite thing to do) and took Ezra to breakfast and then to a movie. They came home and ate some lunch and then he took Ezra to the playground. Fun times. While they were gone in the morning, I had a chance to teach a Zumba class in a space a friend of mine owns. We were only able to put it together at the last-minute so I only had three people show up, but it was still a lot of fun. Hope to be able to do it again next time I'm in town.

The Museum
Ezra and I got back into town on Monday. I worked on Tuesday and then on Wednesday we had a fun family outing to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, OH. Michael has been before but it was when he was little. Ever since we moved here, Michael has been saying that we need to go. Michael was on Spring Break this week so we decided to do it. It is a really neat place. So many planes and so neat to be up close to all of them. Some we were even able to get into. I don't know even a quarter as much about planes as Michael does (he very nearly had his pilot's license!) but it was still cool to see it all. Ezra got a little worn out (it's a huge place) but it was well worth the trip. We got a little silly on some parts of our time there as you can see in some of the video footage I included below (the last part of the film is Ezra playing with his plane that he got at the museum gift shop in our front yard when we got home.)



In other news, we recently hopped on the Netflix bandwagon and are so glad we did! We discovered that they have all the seasons of The Cosby Show on instant play! That alone is worth the $10 per month. We have a new family ritual of watching one episode at night before Ezra goes to bed now. So fun to see that show again and share it with Ezra who laughs just as hard as we do.

The weather was insanely beautiful at the beginning of the week and it has taken a major nose-dive and probably won't be heading up for a little over a week! We are staying in today and preparing for our trip to Tennessee. We will leave tomorrow morning after I teach my classes at the Y.

If you're interested in seeing any pics from the above events, just check out this album.