I’ve got to tell you about a terrific holiday experience I’ve had already that I don’t want you to miss out on if you have little ones in your family.  I visited the Center for Puppetry Arts last weekend for the first time with friends and their young daughter to see Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  I’ve got to say I wasn’t expecting much, but the Center has been kind enough to invite me over the years, and I love Rudolph, so I wanted to check them out.  I could tell as soon as I sat down on the comfortable, kid-friendly benches and looked at the curtain, that what I was going to see would not be your ordinary puppet show.  The moment the curtains open and the “Burl Ives” snowman skates around the stage, you know it’s going to be a performance that is true to the original – puppets, music, and all.  The puppeteers are magnificent!  Their voices are wonderful and familiar—their impressions of the characters’ voices are spot on!  One of my favorite things about the performance is how distance is created by using much smaller versions of the puppets to show them far away, then the bigger ones up-close, sometimes changing them quickly back and forth. There are lots of laughs and, simply, lots of joy in this show.  And, in keeping with the idea that kids have a short attention span, the show is a little over an hour – not too long, and certainly worth the price of admission. One bonus is that the puppeteers come out from behind the curtain at the end to show you how they work their characters. It’s great fun to see the people behind the voices.  And there are Jim Henson exhibits at The Center – you haven’t lived till you’ve posed next to the life-sized Big Bird behind glass – amazing to see up close! Go to www.puppet.org for info.