We started the evening meeting CinJin, Jerrod, Cait and Andrea for dinner at good ol' Hometown Buffet - we all realized that we don't eat as much as we used to - but it was still fun, fast and reasonably priced - thanks to Jin for the treat!
Ry was soooooo happy to have his buddy there. The kids sat at their own table and for the first time, I listened to them really talk to each other. They were gabbing like grown ups! They talked about everything from "when was the last time I saw you? what have you been up to?" to talking about school and friends to video games and presents they got for Christmas. Ry and Jerrod event talked about having Jerrod over for a sleepover sometime... and how Ry wants him to come to Castle with him and his Dad... :)
After dinner we made the customary Cindy Starbucks run... then headed over to the HP Pavilion using the Garmin I got Stan for Christmas to guide us there... unfortunately, I didn't trust in it and didn't listen to what it was saying and ended up starting off going the wrong way on 880... darn it! they changed the onramps... Garmin knew it... but I didn't... I know... I should listen!!! :)
Anyway... we got to the HP Pavilion and immediately saw the setup for the show. It was very cool! They used every inch of the arena floor plus the first 5 rows of seats (they were blocked off with black felt tarps) --- we sat in Row 6 so we had a great view of how things worked... :)
Ryan was totally in awe of the big dinosaurs the whole time. I loved how he screamed out the names of the dinosaurs as they came out. I was impressed because he got the right names! There were dinosaur names I'd never even heard of! He knew the different periods and all sorts of random information that I never knew... (or maybe knew at one point and didn't remember?) Kudos to Mrs. McGraw for being such an awesome teacher!!!
It was very cool to see the stories tall dinosaurs with their lifelike movements... I wished I could've gotten up close to touch their "skin" - I wanted to see what they were made of. It wasn't until near the end of the show when I figured out how they were moving. (For the small dinosaurs, it was evident that someone was dressed up in costume but for the big ones, they were on platforms with tiny go-kart looking bases disguised to match the floor and the dinosaur with guys driving them... )
Here are some of Ry's favorite pictures - the rest are posted on our Smugmug (password: turtles) --- no flash photography was allowed so some are kind of dark and blurry... sorry about that!
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