Star Wars Midnight Madness

Daddy and Hudson went to the Toys 'R Us midnight madness sale for the launch of the new Clone Wars product line. Fifteen members of the 501st were there and my little guy was both excited and nervous. The 501st is a volunteer organization for people who like to make their own highly detailed Star Wars costumes. Unless you are an honorary member, the only way to join to is make your own costume and have it reviewed and approved for "authenticity". What is great about them is that they also do a lot of charity work. They do fund raisers for Make-A-Wish foundation and make regular trips to the children's ward of hospitals to spread a little joy about the galaxy far, far away.

Anyway, the local garrison of the 501st had fifteen members attend the event. There were clone troopers, stormtroopers, Boba & Jango Fett, Padme, a Jawa, and even a "lifesize" Chewbacca who stood over seven feet tall (he must have been on half-stilts). Hudson was fascinated, but too scared to get close to him. He was content just waving to him. However, this morning (*late* this morning) when he woke up, he asked to see, "Chihuahua Chewbacca". I guess he liked him after all!

The big hit for him was meeting Boba Fett up close. He was still a little nervous and needed me to hold him, but he always wanted to know where Boba (and Jango) were.

IndyCar Race

Hudson saw his first racing event at the Firestone Indy 200. We weren't sure how he would handle it since he doesn't like loud noises. We bought some ear muffs prior to our trip downtown to see the Motocross show, but he refused to weart them back then. Fortunately, the motorcycles weren't very loud and he was fine without them.

What helped this time was that our friend Carl joined us for the race. While Mommy and Daddy were wearing foam earplugs that he could really see, Mr. Carl had his own earmuffs he uses at the shooting range. So Hudson wanted to be like Mr. Carl and had no trouble wearing them for the whole evening.

The race itself was very fun. He loved seeing the cars go around the track "super fast". We bought him a few die cast Indy cars too, which he kept with him the whole night. He already had a Tony Kanaan car (Mom is a big TK fan, and Dad is too) - the Big Gulp 7-Eleven car. So we bought him Danica Patrick's car and Helio Castroneves car. Of course the one he really wanted was a Target car (his favorite store - for toys!), so we bought him boring ole Scott Dixon.

It turns out that Scott Dixon won the race, for the third time in a row. Also, sadly, we learned later that the IndyCar Racing League would not be returning to Nashville in the future. They have recently merged with the CART league and they had too many tracks for the 2009 schedule. This is really disappointing, but we're so glad we were able to see at least one IndyCar race together at our home track.