Have we ever mentioned Off-Fridays on our little blog? Matthias's job has him work 9 hour days to receive every other Friday off. Granted, he does have to go in on some Off-Fridays, but usually only for a few hours. But they are so wonderful to try to maximize holidays by planning them appropriately. This weekend we had a 4-day weekend because of how Off-Friday landed. Lovely!
On Friday we did the normal stuff, like grocery shopping and cleaning up the house. Plus Matthias took the baby for the morning and let me catch up on my coupons. That evening we had some friends over from Matthias's work for dinner. Matthias made La Bandera, which he ate just about every day on his mission. Mmm..so good!
Saturday was more work around the house. I entertained Oliver, who has been under the weather lately with a fever and the sniffles, and Matthias was busy sanding/staining/sawing/drilling, etc in the garage. He's working on refinishing a solid maple desk that our neighbors found for us in a dumpster. Sanding it down got rid of the treadmark stains, and now Matthias is just about done with the desk, just with the drawers and hutch to go. He's amazing.
Also, this week Oliver discovered how to slide the baby gate out so that he could climb the stairs, so Matthias turned our cheap $20 baby gate into a $90 hinged baby gate with just a couple of hinges, a latch, and a couple of 2x4s. It works amazingly, and yet again Oliver is deterred from the stairs. He can climb up them wonderfully, but sometimes he tries to sit back so we have to catch him. He also isn't interested in trying to learn to climb down stairs yet.
That night we risked leaving our sick baby with a sitter because on Thursday night Matthias heard that Wicked was at the Boston Opera House, so we bought tickets for Saturday night, in the back row. They had to be shipped overnight, but it was totally worth it! After calling my brother to scope out parking ideas, we remembered that some friends would always take the T (aka subway) on their adventures in Boston, and my brother had recommended the same, so I got to take my first ride on the subway! I forgot my wider-angle lens, so this is the best picture we got of us on the Subway:
After walking back and forth for awhile we finally discovered which direction we were going and found our way to the Boston Opera House. Beautiful!
Please excuse that I was too lazy to make my panorama shot look better. You get the picture. Look at how intricately carved everything is? It's amazing! What was even more amazing was walking inside!
Does this not look like the ceiling in Beauty and the Beast? That was my first thought. I mean, no cupids, but the grandness and intricacy of design?
I wish there weren't mobs of people that kept us moving so that all of my photos turned out blurry. Red on red damask wall papers. Marble. Gold leaf. Intricate carvings. Curved window panes. Isn't luxury so grand?
Speaking of grand, how about my date? The pictures of me were far too blurry. The moving masses make photo taking stressful.
Can you just imagine those chandeliers being lit with candles? Not sure if they kept the ones that were original or anything, but I always wonder how they go about adding electricity to such ornate things.
Yes, I was even amazed by the carpet. I wanted a picture of the stairs covered in this carpet, but again, masses of people.
Oh yeah, and the play was absolutely amazing, just as I knew it would be. This is Matthias's illegal snapshot from behind my purse. The view was great besides the heads in front of us, so better seats may not have made much of a difference. What's funny is that I have a very similar picture from the first time I saw wicked, which was the weekend before I met Matthias.
A lot of people looked at us weird when we told them that we saw a play called "Wicked". In case you don't know, it's a wonderful musical about the Wicked Witch of the West, pre-Wizard of Oz. Like her birth and school days and what led to all the people in Oz being terribly afraid of her. You find out that really, she always had good intentions, and her wickedness to Dorothy and such was out of anger, but a short-lived wickedness that she left so that she could go about doing good like she had wanted to all along. And, dun dun dun, she and Glinda are best friends. The music and dialogue are so clever, too. We were amazed by the choreography and the total flow of the entire play. I asked Matthias after it was over if it was worth paying that extra $25 for overnight shipping of the tickets and he definitely said yes.
Then we took the T back to our car and drove home having one of those talks that only we can have. I love being married to my best friend!
Note to self: Check that wider-angle lens is in your purse before assuming it is.
