Busy weekend...the eagle has landed!

We saw more "gymnastic" sort of stunts, rather than a lot of shadow work. The one shadow piece that they did do was sort of neat, but it was more to do with lights rather than the actual bodies of the dancers. I was a bit disappointed in that piece...

Some of the other pieces were great. The second one was a solo dancer, in a red outfit and his pure strength alone was amazing. I liked the low lighting reflected on his outfit for that piece, although the music was a bit annoying at times.

My favorite piece was right after intermission. The performers formed a group of 5- 3 males and 2 females. They were very scantily clad, and so every single muscle in their bodies stood out, and you could truly see that dancers are the world's most impressive athletes. They looked much stronger than any football player I've ever seen, and an ALL OVER strong, not just some upper body strength. The way their bodies moved on this piece was amazing to me. They were using each other to maneuver all over the stage as one, yet sometimes breaking apart from each other.

All in all, I was very impressed with the talent from this group, but wish that they would have shown a bit more "human interaction" with more dance and less special effects and stunting.

On Saturday, I woke up and was messing around on the internet...surprise, surprise. I saw an article about the Eagles in Alton, and how you could go see an Eagle at the Alton visitors center. So I woke up Rich and the kids and told them we were going Eagle watching that day. They groaned and moaned and said they didn't want to see stupid Eagles...but I was on a mission to have some family fun. So off we went!

Our first stop was at the Visitors Center to see a live eagle. Here are some pics of the boys in front of the eagle and then with their "must have" souvenir eagles:
So, now that they had both received their souvenirs, they were a little happy and they were ready to find some "real ones".

We drove further along the river road, and the river was absolutely icy. The kids were having fun watching the barges drive through and break up the ice:

Gosh darn it it was cold out there!!! I had read before we left that the eagles like to float down the river on the ice. It proved to be true, because we saw several at different points along the river:
We kept driving along and seeing cars pulled over to the side of the road, so we would get out and take pictures of those eagles too:


There were eagles all over the place, and we started having a contest to see who could spot the most. The kids had a lot of fun using the binoculars my grandma had given me that used to be my grandpa's.

After we were finished watching eagles, we went to eat and I asked the kids if they had a good day. They said it was really fun and they had a blast.... this is why I try not to listen to them when they're moaning and groaning before we leave....