The Pariseaus: Atlanta...3: puppets!

Today's adventure? The Center for Puppetry Arts. They advertise a regular exhibit with thousands of puppets, the current rotating exhibit of Jim Henson's puppets, a make-a-puppet craft, and a live puppet show. So off we set! Unfortunately, the Center is not in walking distance to the hotel, and taxis won't take Drew without a carseat. So, it was time to try the Atlanta MARTA, or subway system. It was easy! The challenge came when we got off - the Center told us they were "right around the corner," which turned out to be more like down a massive hill, across two blocks, around the corner, and around the block again to find the front door. In the cold. But we made it!

Tickets to the shows were sold out, but they kindly put us on a wait list and somehow found seats to let us in. While we were waiting, we saw the exhibits. The first was a history of puppets around the world, which was somewhat interesting. Evan and Mike got to play with stick puppets and shadow puppets and put on a little show for Drew and me.

The Center wouldn't let us take photos in the Jim Henson exhibit, but wow was it cool. There were real, lifesize Big Bird, Ernie, Dr. Teeth, and two Kermits - one that was the very first Kermit Jim created out of his mother's old winter coat, and a modern Kermit that we all know and love. There were so many more, each with a great story of how the puppet came to be or a funny anecdote about a particular performance. Evan thought it was "ok," Drew was interested in all the bright colors and didn't seem to think much of Big Bird, and Mike and I were enthralled.

Next we went upstairs to the workshop to create our very own puppet. The live show was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and that's the puppet we got to make. A very nice staff member gave us a lesson in shadow puppets, and Mike and Evan got crafty with tape, hole punches, and colored paper. The result was great! Evan was only too happy to try it out.

The show was simply amazing. It was a full performance (maybe 60 minutes) of the movie Rudolph, done live and with puppets. The Center created all it's own puppets that looked EXACTLY like the characters in the movie, sets moved, and the 5 puppeteers "ran" what must have been 20 characters, did all the lines, and sang all the songs. Simply amazing. It was definitely time to head home after all the morning's fun, and unfortunately we didn't have the stroller. So Evan got a ride on Mike's shoulders, back around the block, around the corner, up two blocks, up the massive hill, and onto the train.

We had a long afternoon nap (I could get used to these!!), then it was time for some additional evening fun. We got to go with the football team over to see the Atlanta Hawks play the Washington Wizards! Evan was fully refreshed after the long nap, so between his energy, his excitement at riding the bus with real (and really big) football players, and going to the game with his buddy Connor, we had a hard time keeping up. We only stayed for the first half of the game because it was getting late, but we had plenty of time to soak in the excitement of an NBA game, have a hot dog, and do some good running around in the concourse.