Time is the Best Gift

Last night, Joanna and I went on a "date." Actually it was my birthday present to her. You see, Joanna is totally enamored with High School Musical (HSM) EVERYTHING! I had taken her older siblings to see the stage production of HSM when it was playing here at the Fox Theater a couple of years ago. So, as my birthday present to Joanna, we went out to dinner and saw HSM2 which is premiering here at the Fox. Her parents dropped her off around 5 pm. She was all dressed up with her HSM shoes, HSM hair barrette, and matching outfit. This should have given us plenty of time to drive into town, have dinner, and be at the theater in plenty of time for the show. However I, for some unknown reason, thought the show started at 8 pm like most of the other shows I see there. On the way driving in, Joanna said, "Doesn't the show start at 7 Grammy?" After a quick check of the tickets, I realized, in fact, the show was to start at 7 pm. Having left the house at 5:30, that only gave us a minimal amount of time to show up at the theater on time. On the drive in I prayed that there would not be a wait time at the Old Spaghetti Factory, where we had decided to have dinner(the reason being that Fettucini Alfredo is Joanna's "favorite" meal). Keep in mind, I had been home all day with nothing in particular to do except get ready. There were so many cars there when we arrived at 6 pm I was fearful. However, we were seated immediately. When our server learned we had to be at our show a 7 pm, he assured us we had "plenty of time." Joanna enjoyed her dinner, but commented that it was "not as good as Mommy's". She even selected the spumoni ice cream over the vanilla ice cream for dessert (which she liked by the way). We arrived at the Fox, took a quick photo of Joanna in front of the marquee (for her scrapbook of course), bought a commemorative T-shirt, and were in our seats with five minutes to spare before showtime. The show and music was quite good (for a teeny bopper show) and Joanna liked it all. At the intermission we walked up front to look down into the orchestra pit and up at the twinkling lights (stars) over all the ceiling at the Fox. Joanna was pleased to see that Troy kissed Gabriella at the end of the show. She had wondered about this earlier having seen HS2, the movie, repeatedly. On the way home, we discussed the parts of the show we liked best. Isn't it nice that retirement offers you time to do things like this with your "grands"? I just wish all of 11 of mine lived close enough that I could do things with each and every one of them.