Sunday, November 15, 2009

Happy Birthday Sesame Street!

This was the best I could do of the show, we were quite a way back, and it was pretty dark...
This is a bad picture, but you only get ONE!





Pudd watching the airplanes over head on TR Island...




Today was the big day! I got home from work as early as possible and we took off to George Washington University for the big show. It was packed! There were about 1500 people in the auditorium, so I figured out pretty quickly that this was not going to be the intimate experience with the muppets I had hoped to have! Ha! The program ended up including Abby Cadabby, Zoe, Prairie Dawn (who are preformed by the same woman) and of course Elmo. Kevin Clash spoke quite a bit, and Sonia (who plays Maria) was great. I felt bad that Elmo got a bigger round of applause than she did though! He's a popular little guy. They showed clips from all the decades, we sang 2 songs together, the Muppets were let out of their bags and talked, and they let the audience ask questions. One little boy wanted Elmo to be an astronaut and go to space with him! Very cute! We then split into 2 groups and one went up for autographs and pictures with Maria, and the other went to pictures with the muppets. With all the people there you can imagine the wait times. We were in the picture line for over an hour, and the only one left for us was Elmo. Kevin Clash ducked down in the picture, and we only got ONE picture so you can't see him. I wish they had done it a little differently, but honestly, I don't know any better way to handle 1500 people either! Meeting Maria(Sonia) was fantastic! She is EXACTLY like she is on TV. It was strange meeting someone who's voice you have heard almost as long as your Mother's and yet she has never met you. I simply looked into her eyes, squeezed her hand and said "Thank You." As a kid, growing up in a small, rural community, with very limited resources, Sesame Street opened my eyes to a whole world that was out there. It was my story hour, my music class, and my preschool all in one! I was disappointed that Cookie Monster wasn't there, but you can't have everything in life!

After all that fun we stopped on the way home at Teddy Roosevelt Island for a quick hike. We saw two deer and came within about 6 feet of them. They are so tame there it's almost scary!

7 comments:

Julie said...

WOW! I wish Ernie was there. I can't believe it has been on 40 years.

Kelly said...

I was sad not to see Ernie too! It was still fun though!

Ms. Leigh said...

That sounds amazing. I used to watch it twice a day! I miss it. I won't let Booker watch because we really do not like Elmo, infact I call him the monster with no name because he is on the diapers we get. HA.

Kelly said...

Well, let him watch eventually! It has been shown to make a real difference in pre reading skills! Think how many things we remember from it! That shows how effective it is! I am not crazy about Elmo either, but I appreciate all the other aspects! How will Booker ever know what letter "Cookie" starts with? LOL!

Ms. Leigh said...

I think I need to do research on Elmo's target age range and I will avoid it during those peak elmo times and then we can do more sesame street!
They need to have the old ones on DVD!

1234 5 6789 10 11 12
11 12

HAHAHA
I know you know what I am singing

Ms. Leigh said...

Oh Hello Old School Sesame street.
I found it on Amazon.
Two volumes!
Now I can totally buy those and not deprived Booker of Big Bird and The awesome animation of those days ;)

Kelly said...

The old school DVD's are great! By the way, Elmo is really only on for the last 20 minutes of the new one's. That's when they do the Elmo's world part. It is for ages 2-4 or so. William loves Grover the best right now, and Cookie Monster.