An afternoon "day trip" before hockey game

With DH and Robert (older son) in Colorado this week, Matthew (younger son) and I are enjoying our weekend together. But it isn't without any hockey - for he had one game yesterday and one this afternoon. Yesterday's game was in Santa Rosa, California (which is about an hour and a half from where we live) and didn't start until 6:30pm. However, Santa Rosa was the home of Charles Schultz, the cartoonist of Snoopy & the Peanuts - so we decided to leave right after lunch and visit the Charles Schultz museum and the gift shop before needing to be at the rink. And, the rink is right by the museum - for Schultz loved hockey and skating and built the rink. It is very cute.

Anyway, first we went to the museum. On the top floor of the museum, it has one room which is set up as the office of Charles Schultz showing photos of his family, his books and his desk where he sat and drew all the cartoons. Another room on the top floor covered the story of his life from when he was born until his death. On the bottom floor, they have a rotating display of Peanut cartoons, which they display in certain themes - currently they were highlighting sports and music, both were important to Schultz and he used these theme in Peanut cartoons. Like Schoder played the piano...Charlie Brown and the gang played baseball a lot...Snoopy and Woodstock played hockey on the birdbath, and so on.

Outside in the courtyard of the museum, they have several status of peanut characters, like Linus, Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Woodstock. In fact there are characters all over the museum grounds and the grounds of the skating rink. Here is Matthew with Woodstock and another photo with him and Snoopy.

While we were at the museum, Matthew and I worked on some activities which they handed out to us when we entered in the museum. The activities was a cross word puzzle, a maze and a hidden picture puzzle. In order to finish some of the activities we had to visit a few of the different statues in the court yard because they offered some hints to the puzzle (for example the Linus sculpture actually had the finished crossword puzzle on the back - so, I guess it wasn't quite a hint as it was actually the answer). So, with a little "cheating" we were able to finish the puzzles and Matthew got a Peanuts pencil case as a prize.

Before leaving the museum, we enjoyed "The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" for they were showing it in their little theater. There is just something about the Peanuts cartoons that bring back memories from my childhood. I remember watching these holiday cartoons...sitting around the TV with my sisters and parents...the Dolly Madison commercials. Now, after watching "The Great Pumpkin" it feels like Halloween.

Well, after the visit to the museum, it was time to get the hockey gear out of the car and get a good snack for Matthew before warm ups and the hockey game.

Snoopy Home Ice - The Redwood Empire Ice Rink is very cute and has a lot of history associated with it as it pertains to Charles Schultz. But instead of blogging about it, I attached the link so if you are interested in visiting it and/or reading about it, you can. Matthew and his team finally got ready for the game - which they ended up winning 12 to 3, and Matthew even scored a couple of goals. This was a preseason game, as Northern California use the first couple of weekends to determine where to place all the youth hockey teams (designating them either as "A" or "B" in order to set up the season games, making sure that the competitiveness is pretty equal between the teams).

The game ended around 8pm and we didn't get back home until 10pm. It is a long drive in the dark; but it was a fun afternoon. In the meantime, Robert (older son) - they lost their 2 games yesterday (so they have won 2 and lost 2). They are playing their last game as I type this entry and due to their 2 losses, will not be playing in the championship...so DH and Robert might find an earlier flight out of Colorado and get back home earlier tonight. This afternoon...Matthew has another game, but at least it is on their home rink, which is somewhat near our house. It is going to be a challenging game, so we really don't expect the team to win this one.

Well...I will end this post now. I have doing some model stitching for CindyMae; hoping to finish the 3 of 5 ornaments so that I can pick up my Trick or Treat to work on this week. We are suppose to be having some storms coming in here on Tuesday - which means lots of rain...which really means good stitching weather.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend! Remember - Live, Love, Laugh and Stitch Often! Lisa