Sesame Street Live!

Two weekends ago, the USO sponsored Sesame Street Live! The organization brought the show to us here in Germany - for FREE for U.S. servicemembers and their families. Simple thing, right? It's just a kids show. But it is soooo nice to be remembered WAYYY over here across the ocean. There just aren't things like this for the kids very often - unless your kids speak German!

We got to the show early. I wasn't sure how we were going to entertain the kids while we were waiting for the show to start, but I didn't need to worry. The sweet USO people gave every child a bandana and a super cool spinning Elmo toy. It incorporated every child's favorite activities all into one toy - button pushing, motion, lights, and Elmo! I found out later that at Sesame Street Live shows, these toys run $15 a pop. That's $45 worth of free toys PLUS whatever the ticket would have cost. Wow.

The show began!
And guess who is enjoying it the most? hahaha...

The little blond girl is Isaac's friend from German kindergarten, Zoe.

I wish I could begin to describe the magic that the evening was. It was displayed all over each of the boys' faces. The photos just don't capture that!

Isaac got to meet Grover in person.

And Aziel too!

Elijah was too scared to meet his heros in person.

After the show, the kids went up to shake hands with all the characters. Aziel didn't want to leave the stage. He parked himself right in front of Cookie Monster and kept his little hand up until Daddy picked him up to go.

Afterwards, we went to Burger King with Zoe's family. It was just one of the "funnest" nights I've had in ages!

Sesame Street also gives out a kids deployment DVD regularly. It's really quite touching to hear Elmo talk about missing his daddy, and then seeing Elmo's daddy come home and sing about how proud he is of Elmo... I get all choked up. When Martin was deployed, we watched it sometimes, but not a lot. I caught Isaac crying one time while watching it, and it was really hard... anyway... I love Sesame Street and the USO. They do such fantastic things for the military families. :)