A Christmas Carol

My brother Alex is in the cast for A Christmas Carol at the Hale Center Theatre. He was kind enough to give Devin and me tickets to see it last night. Unfortunately, Devin was kept really late at work so he was not able to go with me. I really wanted to be able to go and show some support for Alex and not let the tickets go to waste, but I also didn't want to go all by my lonesome self! My mom suggested that I take my almost 8 year old nephew Chase. My parents had seen the play earlier this week and noticed some kids in the crowd and they seemed to really enjoy it. I was a little hesitant at first that keeping Chase awake until 10:30 PM would either be impossible or impossibly difficult to deal with a cranky 7 year old.
When I picked him up, he had his car booster ready and ran out the door. I brought him a fudge bar to eat in the car and he ate it faster than I ever imagined possible. When we arrived, I parked on the street thinking I was being clever and avoiding a jammed parking lot. We walked to block to the the theatre only to realize that there was plenty of parking in the front row! We had a race back to the car and re-parked. We got our seats on the second row and settled in for a long stay. I asked him several times if he needed to use the bathroom, thinking he was lying and would have to get up in the middle of the performance and he very kindly told me a million times that he was fine.
The show started and Chase's eyes grew wider by the minute! If any of you have ever been to the Hale Center Theatre, it's a pretty small stage in the center of a all of the seats. The actors/actresses make their entrances and exits through the aisles and they also use the aisle as an extension to the stage. Since Chase chose the aisle seat, he constantly had costumes and lights in his face, which only added to his enthusiasm. During the intermission we got some treats and settled back in our seats. I asked Chase who his favorite character was so far and he said "ALEX." What a good little nephew!
The second act opened and smoke began pouring onto the stage. Chase was on the edge of his seat! The third ghost, the ghost of Christmas yet to come, was HUGE and pretty scary looking. I noticed Chase's eyes open wide when the ghost made his appearance. Afterwards, I asked Chase if he got scared and he said no, he knew it was fake so it didn't scare him.
We got up to leave thinking we would see Alex in the lobby, but when we couldn't find him, I decided it was really late and I needed to get Chase home. We started to drive away and we noticed all of the actors outside singing carols. So I re-parked the car again and we ran up and gave Alex hugs and ran back to the car. Chase informed me that I better hurry because it was way past his bedtime! What a great kid!
When we arrived back to Chase's house I was surprised to see little Cayden (Chase's little brother) running around more hyper than I have ever seen a little toddler. Penny just sighed and said he had a late nap so he was completely wired now! Well, I think I wore out Chase cause he went right to bed but I can't say the same for little Cayden! Poor Penny! At least Brandon and Callie were completely asleep!