Come with us to Erie, Pennsylvania...

As planned, we left on the morning of Friday, September 12th to make the journey from our home to Erie, Pa. It took about 5 hours and Michael slept a good portion of the way. It was raining so hard that you couldn't see very well so Jeff & I took turns driving. We went straight to the theater and arrived about a half hour before the show.

The show was at the Warner Theater which was recently refurbished and the interior was absolutely breathtaking.

They opened the doors around 3:30pm and we made our way to the manager's office as we we told to do. Jeff & I got laughing because the ushers in the theater could all work for the Secret Service as they were very zealous in keeping people away from the auditorium before the show. Jeff said he was sure one of them was getting ready to tackle me as I followed the manager to go see Darby.

And here she is:

Michael was very reserved and shy around Darby. I think he was in awe of finally meeting her.

He was a lot more comfortable with Pooh....

... and Tigger.

I think that is because they weren't "strangers" to him. He had not only met them, but spent quite a bit of time with them at Disneyland. I think if he had more time with Darby (we were only with her for about 5 minutes), Michael would have opened up but it doesn't matter because he is content and happy with the time he had with her.

After our meet and greet, we made our way to our seats and watched the show. We were in the third row, just slightly left of center stage, which was great. Michael clapped, waved, sang and danced.

After the show, we went a couple of doors down from the theater and had an awesome dinner at an authentic Italian deli before heading to our hotel. Of course, the first thing Michael did after we checked in was head down to the pool.

There was a traditional pool -

... and a kiddie pool that had an umbrella shaped sprinkler that Michael played under.

I'm sorry the pictures of our meeting with Darby aren't that great but the manager took the pictures of Michael with Darby with my camera and all of the pictures after that are blurry. He must have hit the dial and changed the settings by mistake and it didn't get fixed until I turned the camera off and on again.

Tomorrow is chemo again already. It will just be Michael and I as Daddy is working a 16 hour shift. We picked up one of Michael's all-time favorite movies tonight, "Spookley the Square Pumpkin", to take to treatment tomorrow and share with the staff. Michael has been bugging me (with a capital "B") to put up the Halloween decorations for the last couple of weeks and we already ordered his "special" costume so I think he is just a little excited about Halloween this year!

Michael had another great day at school today. Mrs. Greenwood sent home a note today that said "Michael has done a super job since Wednesday." There was also a sampling of the work he did this week and not only were they done, they were done very well. I guess he finally figured out that he might as well do his work with the other kids because if not, he will just have to do it at home. Michael went to the after school program that is right at the school today and when I picked him up, he took me to his classroom to show me some of the other things he had done this week. There was such excitement and pride in his voice I just wanted do a little dance. (But I thought the custodian may think I had lost my mind so I controlled myself.)

I will post again tomorrow night so please keep Michael in your thoughts and prayers, JoAnne.