The Cradle will ROCK!

I borrowed this picture from the Okee Dokee Brothers Facebook page. See if you can spot Max

My favorite radio station in the Twin Cities is 89.3 The Current. They are a branch off of Minnesota Public Radio, and they basically have free reign to play whatever they want- most times I love the music, occasionally I can't stand it. But that's the beauty of it! Plus, they play tons of local music, which holds a special place in my heart. The Twin Cities boast some pretty awesome local talent!

Every year, The Current hosts a family day called Rock the Cradle, where they have live kids music, puppet theater, an "instrument petting zoo", and storytime with the radio DJ's... plus a whole host of other offerings. They take over the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Children's Theater for a day, and the place is CRAWLING with kids and families. This year, we decided Max would have a good time, plus (of course) the Okee Dokee Brothers were scheduled to play!

Even though the sky was already dumping snow on us after Mass, we decided to brave the roads and drive into Minneapolis for the event. Oh my goodness, I don't even want to know what it would have been like on a nice day! All of the street parking was taken, and the ramps both had signs flashing "FULL. FULL. FULL" to warn people against entering in vain. Ahh, but enter we did, on the off chance that those signs were lying. And to our amazement, a car was pulling out just as we drove in! We managed to snag one of the rare covered parking spots and avoid having to take a shuttle from blocks away!

We were blasted by the snow as we walked to the building, but we thawed quite quickly when we got inside. We shed our coats and went off exploring. Sadly, we had thought we were planning ahead by bringing a baby backpack instead of a stroller (they had advised against strollers because of crowding) but ended up having to ditch the backpack (apparently backpacks are forbidden in the gallery... news to us!) and Paul carried Louie all day. Bummer.

First stop was the Okee Dokee Brothers concert. We were early, so we made our way upstairs slowly through the art galleries. One of the volunteers pointed us toward the "magic elevator" down the back hall. It was a super old, still-functioning elevator with a door that had to be pulled open manually... super cool! Up three floors we went, then off to the concert. We were not disappointed. Justin and Joe put on an awesome show, as always, but for the first time we got to see them with a full band! Max danced his way through the set, and Lucian clapped after every song.

After the show, we found the DJ Storytime with Mark Wheat. All of the kids got to sit up on stage, and Max found a spot in the very back. For the first two stories, he sat quietly and listened... then I saw him get up on his knees and crawl toward the reader's armchair. Pretty soon, he had hidden himself behind the curtain, followed by two other kids! The other two came out right away, but Max was happy to play by himself in the dark back there. Then he popped out and said "Peek-a-boo!" -- either oblivious to or fully enjoying the fact that there was an entire room of people looking right at him. Mark half-jokingly called "security!" and some volunteers went to retrieve my son from the off-limits area. Ohh... it was only slightly embarrassing when I had to walk in front of the stage to pick him up.

Next was the instrument petting zoo. Max checked out all kinds of drums, bells, and a quarter-sized violin. Then it was snack time, and we met up with my brother Ben before the second Okee Dokee concert. We were disappointed to find that they had started their second set early due to weather and we had missed most of it. But Max didn't mind, he joined right in on the dancing up in front of the stage.

The drive home was snowy and slow, and Max and Lucian both fell asleep within three minutes of getting on the road. They got a nice long nap as we crawled our way across I-94 back home. What a fun day!