Last week our house was filled with excitement to see the Eric Carle’s Treasured Stories by the Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia on Thursday.  Our eldest was going on a field trip with her class to see the presentation while our son and daughter would be going with me to see the performance thanks to tickets given to them by their loving Nana for Christmas (experiences truly make the best gifts).

So to prepare for the performance the kiddos got out all their Eric Carle books and stuffed animals affiliated with those books and read books in the morning, afternoon, and evening.

They also made their very own Little Hungry Caterpillars’ out of an egg container, pipe cleaners, and paint. Our daughter was so excited that she took her’s to school to show her teacher and friends. We also enjoyed edible Hungry Caterpillars.

So the day finally arrives and I had everything ready to go. We dropped off our eldest at school with her booster seat (parents drove but not me since I had the younger two, I was disappointed that I couldn’t chaperon but I understood the logic).  After dropping her off at school we headed to the performance.

It was originally supposed to be at Lourdes College but the venue changed to the Valentine Theatre which is gorgeous.  So we arrive at the parking lot across the street with plenty of time to spare (45 minutes to be exact).  The funny thing is at this moment, when I am pulling into the parking lot I am worried about how I am going to kill time until the performance, boy, if I only knew.

So, I roll down my window to retrieve the parking ticket from the attendant and then drive to a parking spot. Once in my spot I go to close the window and to my surprise it will not close.  So, like any other women would do I sit there and press the button a few times (because maybe by the tenth time it will just start working?), still nothing.  Then I look to see if there is an object stuck in the window jam. I see a small gum wrapper but I am not sure if it would be causing such an issue and besides, I couldn’t reach it.  So I called my hubby for help and moral support because by now my preschooler is getting impatient and my toddler was impatient before we left the house (HELLO, did I mention she is a toddler?).  But he didn’t answer his phone so; again like many women do I figured I would try to call him again, mind you I literally just hung up the phone on his voice mail.  After calling him three times in two minutes I came to the conclusion that he was not available. What to do? Call Dad. And I did. He answered! My hero! But he was not near by (he works near the theatre so I thought he could make everything better somehow?).  He did suggest putting something in the window but I had nothing.  I did not want to leave my window wide open in a parking lot in the middle of Downtown Toledo unattended (I am not saying that crime is really bad but when you leave a window wide open in the middle of January aren’t you just asking for trouble?). Not to mention, it was raining. So I told my kiddos the unfortunate news.  And my preschooler began to cry and I was a second away from crying myself, oh, and the Toddler had already been crying for a good ten minutes (I think she just became background noise after five minutes, don’t judge, I was a little preoccupied with trying to save the day). in-between sobs my preschool said “mommy, can we pray for the window to close, please?”  My heart melted. Sure, I told him and we did but nothing, the window still did not budge.

So I pulled up to the same attendant who greeted us a half hour ago and handed her our ticket and explained the situation.  Then she said something that totally caught me off guard, she said that she would simply move her car and I could park where her car was and she would watch my vehicle during the performance.  WOW! I thought in my head what an amazing woman, how kind of her.  I thanked her, pulled into her spot and got the kiddos out (as well as my registration info and any other info with my personal id numbers. Hey, I am trusting but I am not a fool).

We get inside with ten minutes to spare. As we were walking in we ran into a mom and her boys who attend the same preschool as our son, crazy, right? It wasn’t planned at all and we were both running a little behind so we quickly went to be seated and asked to sit together if possible.  Well, they did not have enough seats all together on the main level so they said they would escort us up to the box seats.  Once upstairs the view was breathtaking. The Valentine is gorgeous, there is a huge chandelier in the center of the ceiling, velvet and gold as far as the eye can see and exudes pure elegance. So there we sat, quickly scanning the room to locate my eldest and her class. We spotted her way up in the center balcony seating.  Part of me wanted to go get her and have her see the performance from our awesome view but I resisted.

The performance was amazing. They did three of Eric Carle’s stories, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you See?, and Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me. The Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia present the stories as puppets with the creative use of black light it really captivates the audience (and by audience I mean 3-6 year olds and chaperons) attention.

After the performance we headed to our vehicle.  I bucked the kiddos in, looked around and found that everything was exactly where I had left it, the stroller, car seats, booster seat, etc. and then opened the driver’s side and made myself nice and cozy in the puddle that had accumulated on seat.  A wet, cold butt was a small price to pay for the joy I had just experienced with my children.

Though, it was rather amusing trying to get out of the parking lot.  Every car I passed thought I wanted to say something. I mean, after all why else would my driver’s side window be down in the rain?  So I had a brief conversation with my daughter’s teacher and then kept the conversations with stranger short and simple by exclaiming “Great performance, huh?”. 

Thankfully I only had to drive around with my window down in the middle of January for one day.  The fresh air and rain was a great pick me up, I didn’t even require my usual afternoon caffeine thanks to the cold, wet rain against my face during afternoon pickup and dance drop off. My hubby had it fixed the next day. 

Granted there was nothing better than dropping the kiddos of the following day and being able to open and close my window, it felt like $350 (yes that is how much it cost to be able to open and close a window).  There is a price for everything these days but true happiness, now that is priceless.

The saying is, When God closes a door, he somewhere opens a window. Well, in this case God opened the door to opportunity and fun and left the window open too!

Special thanks to Nana for getting us the tickets to the performance, also to the kind parking attendant who watched our vehicle, and my hubby for getting the window to operate again.