Sometimes, you are the mean mom, like when you spend a full Saturday morning and most of the afternoon cleaning every inch of your daughter’s room and ask her repeatedly “Keep?” “Are you sure you’re going to play/use/wear this?”
But when it’s all said and done and you leave with three large bags of stuff and the floor is so clean that she has enough room to do a cartwheel, you’re not the bad guy anymore.
And when the rest of your evening involves a trip to see your heroes, suddenly you are the cool mom.
My daughter, who turned 8 this fall, was like thousands of other girls across the U.S. this summer as she sat and watched with open jaw the women’s Olympic gymnastics team. I offhandedly said “We should go see them if they go on a tour.”
Recently, she has been carrying around a couple of trading cards of Jordyn Wieber and Gabby Douglas that she found in her brother’s Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine. She asked me if the gymnasts were coming.
I did a quick search and – yikes – they were coming the following week! Tickets had been on sale for months but I was able to get two pretty good tickets and for once we had an open weekend.
We traveled the hour and a half to The Palace of Auburn Hills for the Kellogg’s Tour of Champions and my daughter was giddy with excitement – bubbling and bouncing in her chair and waiting to get a glimpse of her heroes.
My daughter was completely thrilled with the experience. My only complaint is that the lighting was very dark for most of the performance. They had lasers, spotlights and colored lights and sometimes it was hard to see from a distance. I have to wonder how that played out for the fans in the upper bowls.
The men’s and women’s gymnasts were on hand, along with some entertainment in the form of a guy dressed up like a baby and performing funny stunts to get the crowd going.
My daughter had such an adrenaline rush that when it was over, she immediately said she wanted to go to bed. We got in the car, she handed me her glasses and said “don’t turn on the radio, I’m going to bed.”
I’d call that a successful event!
Tonja's Travels 