Strawberries & Tickets

Today is National Strawberry Day. One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was THIS CALENDAR. I love it. It's old fashioned in that it hangs on my wall and I can easily look at it and see the coming days and note which fun and silly holidays are approaching. Had I not known that it was National Strawberry Day then I may not have purchased strawberries at Costco when I was there and I would have missed out on a FUN after school moment with Addie Lu. We had dumped the strawberries into my big orange colander and rinsed them off. I was going to pull out the stems and cut them up for dinner, but then Addie started eating them and we started talking and giggling and I realized that to truly celebrate the strawberry—it all it's heart-shaped glory, with that perfect little stem handle—we would all need to eat them whole. Addie helped me put them in a big bowl. We sprinkled a little sugar on top and then shared them with Dad and the boys when they got home. 

Life really is about these small moments—and capturing them of course! Sometimes Mondays feel a little depressing to me, so I try to slow down and feel all the feels and just start doing the things (chores) that I need to do. I know if I will do this, I will gather energy as I go. By mid afternoon I'm generally doing much better and by evening I can look back on a productive day. The ticket for me is to do one or two of the little jobs particularly well, or to find something little to celebrate. These are coping strategies that lift my mood. 

Speaking of the ticket ... I almost bought tickets today to see the musical Hamilton in New York City. Almost. These tickets as you may know are very difficult to acquire and very VERY pricey. I found some today for $775-ish a piece (I need 3 tickets) and I was actually SUPER close to hitting that "BUY NOW" button, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. This is because that is simply too much MONEY (for me) and also because as I was checking out I realized that the ticket service was charging me a $230-ish service fee per ticket. WHAT? To even progress to the buy screen, I had already (almost) talked myself into roughly $2200.00 but when the final amount jumped to over $3000.00 I resisted. I can't imagine that I wouldn't have had buyers remorse—now there's a double negative for you! But HELLO? Three thousand dollars? That is simply NUTS—even though I know that this trip is most likely the ONLY trip I will take with my two musical-loving boys, and even though my son Trey is a senior and leaving home soon and has been listening to and singing these songs for a solid year and wants nothing more than to see THIS SHOW and even though I'm dedicated to buying experiences over stuff. 

I couldn't do it. 

Later when Geoff got home and I told him about my *almost* moment, I could see the beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead. I knew then I had made the right choice for us, ha! But, fear not, I am not totally averse to spending large amounts of money, because I did proceed to buy 3 tickets to Taft's number one pick  ... WICKED!

I also bought 3 tickets to the newest show that Trey is excited about—his second choice—Dear Evan Hansen. I hadn't heard anything about this one, until he texted me and asked me to check on tickets. After I listened to a few songs and read about the storyline/message and watched interviews with members of the cast, I was SOLD. Sadly my first attempt came up empty handed. NO SEATS for the week of our spring break. And yes, I know you can still go and possibly buy day-of tickets or maybe even win one of the many lotteries, but I wanted to have at least two shows lined up. I reported the sad news to Trey, who told me to check Stubhub.com and guess what? I GOT TICKETS! 

So, we are set. At least for broadway. If we can score more tickets there then that will be icing on the cake. If not, we certainly have LOTS of other things to do and see. 

Today turned out to be a good day. 
I talked to my mom and dad and both of my sisters. I did a little laundry, a whole lot of shopping and started to get SUPER excited about our trip to New York. And tonight I made my favorite chocolate chip cookies. In fact, I'm going to go eat one (or maybe two) right now. 

YUM.