“Rocked” as in “were fabulous”!!! We have the lawn ticket package for the Orchestra concerts at Blossom, and we’ve taken the kids twice this summer (this year kids under 12 are free). Tonight just my husband and I went. As much as I love for the kids to have that experience, I also love to share it with just my husband. You know, when I can actually hear the music. Anyway, we usually pick the night we go based more on when we are free rather than the program, conductor or soloist. But tonight we got lucky. The program, conductor and soloist were all outstanding. The evening’s music had a Spanish theme, including songs from “Carmen” and ending with “Bolero.” The conductor was so into the music that his enthusiasm was carried into the audience, with some, um, elderlyish people shouting “Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” at the end of a number. You expect that at a rock concert, but not a classical one. And the soloist – a 25-year-old whiz of a violinist from Italy - was amazing. We are just so lucky to have an orchestra of this caliber play at such an amazing facility as Blossom. To picnic on the lawn before the show and then hear such beautiful music while laying back and studying the clouds or the stars, well, it’s pretty special. Tonight was the orchestra’s last performance for the summer at Blossom; next weekend it’s the Festival Orchestra with Looney Tunes and fireworks. Then we wait again until next summer …
Update: This morning I spoke with a woman in her 80s who also happened to go to the concert last night. She agreed with me that it just might have been the best Cleveland Orchestra performance we’ve ever seen!!
Though the park opened at 11, we waited until it cleared up to go there. So around 1 we drive in, and to make a long story short, we find out they had closed the park at 12:30 for the rest of the day due to the weather but they’d be open again ”tomorrow.” Can you believe it ????? I won’t go on and on but you can imagine my mood. Especially since the rest of the day was warm and sunny (hitting a high of 77) and we had to deal with the tears, whining, etc. of three kids who were VERY disappointed and didn’t understand why we weren’t going to the waterpark when it was warm and sunny. I mean, we drove hundreds of miles, paid tolls, used gas, and withstood three miserable kids for hours in the car for this??? UNbelievable. (Two girls who had pulled in next to us had also driven a long time to get there after calling in the morning to hear the message say “We’re open today.” They then called from the parking lot to hear “We’re closed today because of the weather.”). I’ve just never heard of closing a park the whole day, instead of just closing the rides until the rain stopped. ANYWAY. We tried to salvage what was left of the day – we had left home at 8:45 and it was now 1:30 and we had nothing to show for it – so we went to the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum, but not without a lot of tears and whines because the museum was not the waterpark. The museum experience wasn’t perfect either – it was really crowded, my watch died, our youngest daughter got a gushing blood nose and my emergency SOS call to my BFF went unanswered. I thought I was going to lose it. So I went into the art studio and, through the therapeutic powers of art, quickly made this silkscreen print of how I was feeling. I actually felt much better after this. It was short-lived however, because of the hellacious ride back home, which included getting stuck in Pittsburgh Steelers football traffic, a GPS which led us to four roads that were closed and two restaurants which had long since gone out of business, a new pair of broken sunglasses and three overtired children who were bent on pushing us over the edge. Hope your day was better!
It’s never to early to gather ideas for fun! So here are three places you and your kids can cool off for free next summer: