The Animal Cracker

Jeremy, being the awesome employee that he is, is always winning stuff at work for doing such a great job. Usually the prizes are in the form of $25 Visa gift cards, but this time, since it's Christmas, he won tickets to see the Texas Ballet Theater perform "The Nutcracker". Jeremy was not exactly thrilled about this. I was excited though, because I love doing Christmas stuff, and I thought Shelby would love it. All week long we had been telling Shelby we were going to see "The Nutcracker", but she kept insisting that it was actually called "The Animal Cracker".

We got to Bass Performance Hall in Ft. Worth a little early so we could look around. They had all kinds of tables set up with beautiful Nutcracker ornaments and figurines- all kinds of stuff little hands can break easily. So we stayed away from those. We headed over to the huge Christmas trees in hopes of getting a good enough picture for our Christmas cards that still had not been made or sent. Shelby was cooperating at first, but my camera wasn't. By the time I figured out that the switch was in between settings, the batteries died. I was so mad! Jeremy tried to get a few pictures with his phone, but by this point, this was all we got:






I appreciate the free tickets and all, but seriously, we were three rows from the very top. This pregnant lady was WINDED climbing up all the stairs. Shelby was into it for a while, but about halfway through the first act, Jeremy had to take her out because all she wanted to do was play on the steep stairs. She does great in movies, so I thought she would do great here, but I think since we weren't more at a head-on level it was harder for her to get into it.

At intermission, we went out to get something to drink and were able to take a picture with the Nutcracker and two of the rats. The photographers were amazed that she went to them with no problems, but she has never really been afraid of things like the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. I apologize for this picture. I need to reinstall the scanner software on the computer, so for now I just took a picture of the picture. Horrible, but at least you can kind of see the costumes.



We also saw a group of the dancers in the downstairs lobby area, so we ran over and asked to get a picture. You can't tell from this picture, but Shelby was actually really excited to see the ballerinas.



All-in-all, I loved it, Shelby liked it, and Jeremy hated every minute of it. But I figure I have sat through MANY football games for him. He owed me.