This weekend George and I celebrated out 10 year anniversary and since military life often has us separated for long periods of time, we decided to spend the weekend doing a lot of activities as a family, rather than just the two of us.
One of the many activities we did this weekend was attend the Comicpalooza at the George R. Brown Convention Center. It was a first for all of us, though George and I had been talking about it for years. I really love Si-Fi movies and shows, even some books such as Space Western. Though my interests are different than George's in books, we usually enjoy the same movies and shows.
The Comicpalooza was great, we saw so many different characters, artists, collectibles and more. I really was excited to watch Jamie experience everything at such a young age. At 4 he still believes in the reality of super heroes and other characters, and I was interested to see how he'd react to seeing some many different characters, even multiples of the same one.
He really enjoyed it, and his godparents joined us as well.
He got a lot of stuff, a plush Batman, his first (Spiderman) comic book, a lightsaber, and more. When we started out for the event I knew I wanted to get him some original artwork. As a former photography artist, it has always been important for me to support other artists, specifically military and hometown (Houston), as some of my previous posts show.
When we first arrived and I saw all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle art, I thought for sure he's want nearly everything he saw because we are in the process of redoing his bedroom in TMNT. While he liked them all, it was Lego Super Heroes that caught his eye.
We stopped at a variety of booths, looking at the artwork and making a list of the ones that might make the cut, with the intent of choosing one before we left. But we stopped at one particular booth, with artist Oliver Banks, and he's complete and total focus on Jamie and answering his questions and listening to the rambling stories of a 4-year-old made me completely convinced that this was the artist where we would get something from. He even patiently laughed and waited while Jamie changed his mind, 2 or 3 times before deciding on "Lego Superman" and "Lego Batman".
After we left the booth and walked around a little more, Jamie and his plush Batman were called over to a table by an artist, who handed him a piece of cardboard with a marker sketch of Batman and gave it to him. He said he was waiting for a kid who loved Batman to give the sketch. We were so stunned and thanking him profusely, we forgot to get the artist's name! Yep, total failure, but we are going to try to figure it out via the signature and I'll try to reach out to some of my contacts in Houston to see if they can help. Not really my area of expertise, but I've found that the Marketing Industry can leave you surprised sometimes.
All in all, it was a great adventure and Jamie even got to take a picture with Spider-Man! What a treat!!! All in all, we are so excited to be able to explore our own hometown after years of exploring where the Army sent us, and we are are already talking about next year!
Well, until our next cup of tea,
Even Mommy and Daddy found something to take home ...
