I think all concerts should be children’s concerts

We cruised to Santa Cruz today to hear TubaDad play a children’s concert and it was awesome! The orchestra has toured around this month, bringing this show to various schools, and the kids really enjoy the classical music played at their speed. The show highlighted each instrument, played short excerpts custom-designed to hold little folks’ attention, and punctuated the strong music with stilt walkers, ballet dancers, and unicycle riders – all kids themselves. Then they had a “petting zoo” after the show where kids could see and touch the instruments up close. Bravo!

We would have had a blast anyhow, but it sure didn’t hurt that it was an insanely beautiful blue-sky 80-degree day in Santa Cruz. Oh my word. We had icecream, of course. I vividly remember getting vanilla-dipped-in-chocolate-cones when I was a kid. Anyone else? (This is Ro, see the freckles?):

Then we played and played on the beach.

Am I the only one who gets grossed out by beach feathers? Gah. Ro and Ree think they’re precious prizes for the finding, but I always get heebied out by them:

Dinner and sunset-gazing was at the Crow’s Nest (why have we never eaten at that restaurant before?!). It was delicious, and (bonus) they put Hawaiian-style orchids on each plate. The view from our table was pretty incredible too.

Hopped back in the van and headed over the hill, (mistakenly) thinking that everyone else would have gone home by now and we’d have the drive all to ourselves. Rookies! Everyone else obviously had the same idea, because we had bumper-to-bumper traffic the entire way. This view wasn’t quite as picturesque.

That’s ok though, I just put my still-somewhat-sandy toes up on the dash and took a little snooze, TubaDad chilled out and drove, and the girls watched a Barbie Rapunzel movie (the appeal of which completely escapes me).