Josh and Becca Thrap and Family

This weekend the Wheelers came over, which in itself was fantABBAulous, but the reason for their visit was that Josh and Chris had gotten Kate and I tickets to see the musical Mama Mia! Friday night we got to play some cards and then Saturday the guys took all the kids to the Science Center so Kate and I had some time to ourselves to scrapbook and get ready for our big night out. Then, in what seemed like no time, it was time to go! Kate and I had dinner in downtown Des Moines. I thought getting there at 5 was plenty early considering the show didn’t start until 7:30, but apparently there were several other things going on dowtown Saturday night, so even at 5 we had to wait 40 minutes just to get a table. Once we were seated we hoped things would go much faster. We already knew exactly what we wanted to order, and it was nothing fancy, just Pepsi and cheeseburgers. Our waiter was nice enough, but the service was incredibly slow. Our food didn’t arrive until 6:50, and we still had to eat it, pay, and walk two blocks to the Civic Center. I had been hoping for a rich dessert to add to the evening’s “something special,” but there ended up being no time, so I was kinda bummed about that. On the upside, my check had stuff on it that shouldn’t have been and so I brought it to our waiter’s attention and after several moments he returned and said that he didn’t actually know how to get the items off my bill and since he knew we were in a hurry to get to the show (which we had never actually told him, but it was 6:20 at this point, so we were perhaps a little anxious.) he said my meal would be on the house–taken care of. What luck! So I left a good tip and gave Kate a couple dollars cause I felt bad that she still had to pay and then we were off! Our seats were in the ABBAsolutely last row all the way at the top. At first we were starting to feel a little stressed, being almost late, and having to walk in front of several people to get to our seats, and it was very warm inside! But once the show started we had plenty to giggle about and our moods quickly lifted. Of course the music was fun, it was ABBA, and they played it into the story pretty well. I think both Kate and I went into it not knowing anything about the storyline. I was amazed that when I looked around I didn’t see anybody else dancing around in their seats. The only people that seemed to be moving around were obviously there as part of a bachelorette party. Anyway, it was quite an experience. Here’s a shot of Kate and I all dolled up before the show (the picture of us being normal came out blurry, we shot several goofy shots, and this was the most normal that turned out!):