Oregon Symphony night

I started feeling crummy yesterday -- it's a cold or allergies, can't tell, but Drew thinks it's allergies -- and so I skipped chorus (after Benadryl knocked me out cold) and worked, or tried to, from home today. But I was determined to take Rachel to the Oregon Symphony's annual concert at Waterfront Park. They play a bunch of things, including the 1812 Overture with live cannons, and then there's a fireworks display over the Willamette River.

What a difference two years makes! The last time we took Rachel she was so scared of the fireworks that she and Drew left last year before they even started. This year, she could hardly wait.

She ended up spending most of the evening cuddled on my lap or doing gymnastics in Drew's lap. We got food there and some ice cream, most of which I finished because Rachel couldn't -- and I read the latest issue of The New Yorker between numbers. I still feel a little weak and out of it, and will probably go to bed early tonight, but it was still worth dragging myself to the waterfront. It was crowded and we couldn't see much (including the Oregon Ballet Theater's pas de deux of the Black Swan number from Swan Lake), but we all had a good time.

The best part was when Rachel, in the middle of the fireworks display, turned around and kissed Drew, then me, and said, "Thank you for taking me to this." Such a polite, grateful, grown-up girl! It's hard for us to believe she's only 4 sometimes....

***

On the way home Rachel asked us to touch a plastic cactus that it appears she got at school.

Then she said, "DON'T touch this cactus! It's prickly and a witch put a spell on it. If you touch it, you'll turn into a gorilla."

"But what if I WANT to be a gorilla?" Drew said.

"You'll turn into a MAD gorilla," she explained. "And then you'll die."
 
Then Rachel elaborated on the cactus, telling us about a place called "Unicactusland." And right next to it is a place called Flowerville. "All the houses are covered with flowers. And there are carpet daisies, and buttercups in the refrigerators, and bluebells for doorbells," she said. "The houses are covered in magnificent flowers."

"Magnificent flowers, huh?" I said as we pulled into the garage. "Rachel, I love your imagination!"

And her vocabulary. Truly, I do.