Phoenix Art Museum

It's not like me to do so many excursions with the kids like this, but unlike the botanical garden, the art museum is high on my list of things I want to do with my kids. The Phoenix Art Museum is free on Tuesday nights from 3-7, and I knew that if I wanted to do it this summer, last Tuesday was my best chance. So off we went.

I wanted to make sure the kids were really paying attention, so before we went in I gave them one of my 30 second "let's get excited" talks. I told them that while they'd probably like most of the art we'd see, I wanted them to tell me when they found something they loved. Then I'd take a picture of them in front of it, and later we could pick their favorite to put on the blog.

Well, the very first thing we saw was this sculpture in the lobby (we haven't even gone in the main museum yet) and after gaping at it for a minute, the kids all get into their picture poses. ("Hmm," I think. "This may not go as planned.") So I take the picture:

This was the next thing we saw:

By now, I'm starting to see where this is going. The first gallery we went to was the American art gallery, and I must have taken something like 20 pictures of the kids. (This candid one is my favorite though:)

I also like this picture of them with this sculpture. They really liked it and must have walked around it a good three times before moving on.

Anyway, I didn't want to crush their enthusiasm, but at the same time, I didn't want to take pictures of the whole museum. So after a few gentle reminders that we should only take pictures of their very favorites the picture taking finally slowed down.

Now, John was in charge of taking pictures of me in front of my favorites. He was pretty excited about this. As we were walking through the American art he kept asking me why I didn't like any of the pictures. I'm not sure if he really believed that, or if he was just antsy to take a picture. Anyway, I told him I liked all of them, but didn't see my favorites yet.

Then we came to the European Art.

Now that's where John got to take lots of pictures of me. Most of them came out too dark or blurry, but that's okay. Here's one of my favorites, A Woman Reading by Antonio Rizzi.

And even though the next picture didn't turn out, I'm including it to give you an idea of how big this painting is.

We also saw a few Art Masterpiece paintings. Good old George Washington by Gilbert Stuart:

And Claude Monet's Flowering Arches. (I talked about Monet with John's second grade class two years ago.)

Once we had the European section done, I didn't care where we went or when we left (I wasn't sure what kind of stamina they'd have for an outing like this.) So I let them direct where we went after that.

We saw all those Thorne miniature rooms they have there. I just love these. The kids did too (yes we took a lot of pictures). Ben wanted to see what was at the top of the stairs (below) and every time there was a room with a door to an outside garden or something, he'd point it out. Some of these rooms are exact replicas of real rooms (I remember there was a room of one of the kings of France) and the other rooms are faithful replicas of the period (and there's quite a range too, from this art deco room to an old English farmhouse kitchen).

Next was the kids center:

Once they were done with that, we'd been there for a long time already, so I asked if they were ready to go home. "We haven't gone that way yet," John says, pointing to a long walkway bridge leading to the next gallery. I explained that led to a whole other half of the museum, thinking they wouldn't want to see so much.

I completely underestimated them. Not only did they want to go, but we ended up seeing pretty much the entire museum. We were there for three full hours. Yes, there were a few moments when I had to make Chris stop pretending to be a cheetah:








But overall they behaved and seemed to enjoy just about everything. This painting in particular caught their attention for some reason. John and Ben both looked at it for the longest time, longer than anything else we saw. It's Holy Family with the Infant St John the Baptist by Balthasar Beschey.









Surprisingly, I could only find one image of this online, and that one is pretty strictly copyrighted. So here's a few close up shots I took:

They wanted to know why some people have wings, so I explained what cherubs were.

I thought this floor to ceiling painting was cool - Ben did too.

This one is large too, and I just love it. It's called Nevisian Underground #1 by James Casebere. It's actually a photograph. (The link will take you to his site which I poked around on a bit. He really has some amazing photographs on there.)

Also in the Contemporary Art gallery, we saw this little beauty, Seascape #14 by Tom Wesselman.

Now, you know what I did next don't you?

That was tricky, let me tell you (and a wee bit embarrassing). Thanks to John for letting me lean on his shoulder!

There was also the Philip C. Curtis gallery. I always forget this is here, and every time I go, I have the same reaction. An "oh yeah" with mild interest. Then I get closer and by the time I've seen two or three of them, I'm in love. I love this guy's style, and how you see similar elements from one painting to the next. He especially loves painting tall, skinny guys:

That's Gift Bearers. This is Lobby (sorry about the blue glare):

The tall skinny thing amuses me for some reason.

This is Ben saying "There's a house on his head."

Yep. That's surrealism babe. Curtis was referred to as the "gentle surrealist" and I can see that. It's probably why I like his stuff better than Dali (though I do like Dali). (Oh the painting above is called Stroll in Dimension.)

Since Curtis was a local artist (not born here, but lived in Scottsdale since the 40's - he passed away in 2000), they were able to put together a little documentary about him that you can watch on a big flat screen tv. We didn't watch very much of this (it's really long) but we did watch some.

In the film, Curtis was telling a story about a particular painting. He said usually he created his paintings first, then had frames made for them. But one of this framers found a piece of furniture and made a frame out of it, and he then created a painting to fit it.

John got all excited when we saw that, because Curtis was talking about a painting John had me take a picture of just a few minutes before (this is Great Hall):

I wonder what piece of furniture it used to be?

Well, I have one last story to tell.

Even though I can never afford the stuff they sell in art museum shops, I like to look anyway. I could not believe what I found in this one:

That's right folks. Marbles.

Oh, glory be. Now why didn't I think to look here in the first place? This was more fun than Wal-Mart because you get to pick out which marbles you want. I even got a bag for myself. (Can you guess which color marble I picked out first?)

Well that was our little excursion to the art museum. Between seeing great art, finding marbles, and an unexpected foot photo opportunity, I'd say it was a success. Thanks to a cute, young couple walking by, we got a picture of all four of us in front of the entrance holding (of course) our prized marble bags.

Being a Mommy My Way

In my quest to give myself more of a break as a mom, I've decided I don't need to do what everyone else is doing. I'll give you an example. Deb is really good about taking her kids to the Fun Van. It sounds like such a cool activity, and she's told me about it several times, but I've never gone. I kept thinking I should go, though. I even went so far as to get the schedule online and print it out for my bulletin board. It took me months of looking at that schedule and not going to realize something. I don't want to go. And that's okay. Not going doesn't make me a bad mom. It's just that there are different things I'd like to do. I'm giving myself permission to play to my strengths, and do the things with my kids that I enjoy doing. No one can do it all, right? I just need to decide what's important to me. What do I want to do with my kids? Once I asked myself that question, the first thing that came to mind was reading books to my family.

Now, I don't mean reading books to my kids. I've been doing that forever. I mean a longer story that I read to everyone, Brian included. This is a tradition I've always wanted to start, but the timing never seemed right. Now my youngest is finally at an age where I thought he could handle listening to me read longer stories. (My goal is to continue this tradition even into the teen years...we'll see if they let me...)

I wasn't sure when we were going to work this into our routine. Like everyone else, we're busy, and the idea of scheduling in one more thing just sounded stressful. But I decided to take it one step at a time. We started with a trip to the library. I told the librarian what I wanted to do and the ages of my kids and she gave me great suggestions. We checked out several books and brought them home. Ben helped me pick which one we'd start with: The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. I'd never read it before, but it sounded like fun.

Rather than put the book on the shelf with all the other library books, I set it out in plain sight, hoping that seeing it often would help me think of an answer to the "when" question.

That Sunday we were getting ready to go to grandma's house for dinner, a good 15 minute drive. Seeing the book on my way out the door, I grabbed it on impulse, wondering if they'd let me read it to them on the way. Turns out, this is an excellent time. After a couple trips to grandma's house, we're now more than half way through the book. We can get in a chapter or two on the way there and a chapter or two on the way home. When I get to the occasional illustration, I pass the book around. The first time we got home without having finished the chapter, Brian circled the block until we finished it (his idea). The second time we arrived home in the middle of a chapter, he was going to do that again, but for the sake of saving gas I asked him not to. I assured him we could sit in the driveway until I finished reading and that satisfied him. LOL. We're all enjoying the story. I mean, with a motorcycle-riding mouse, how can you go wrong?

I don't know if our reading will ever make it out of the car and into the house, but for now I'm satisfied. This is one of those things I've always wanted to do, and I would have kicked myself if I let the years go by without getting it done.

I have a few more things on my "mommy to do list," including getting these kids to the art museum more regularly. It's been years since we've been there. In fact, I don't think Chris has EVER been there. It's not that I think trips to the art museum are an indispensible requirement of childhood or anything. But my dad took me when I was a kid and I have very fond memories of that. It opened up my view of the world. It made me appreciate how much bigger the world is than me. It made me open to "culture and stuff" as my dad would say. So, art museum trips might not be high on everyone else's list, but it's high on mine.

And I've decided my list is the one that matters most.

Mother's Day

My children

My mother

It's about 4:30 on the morning of Mother's Day, and I've been awake for about an hour and a half now. Chris was up coughing and by the time I got him a drink and cough medicine and patted his leg while he went back to sleep, I was wide awake. It's an odd thing being a mother. While part of me bemoans my loss of sleep while peeling myself from my comfortable bed, the other part of me knows there's no one else I'd rather have comforting my child in the deep of night.

So here I am pondering Mother's Day and what it means to me. On the one hand, Mother's Day rocks. I get beautiful flowers, Brian takes care of all the household duties to give me an entire day off, the children give me homemade gifts (which I always love because it was their hands which made it), I get to listen to talks in church about how important mothers are, and as an extra bonus, the Elders Quorum are taking over Primary so I get to go to Relief Society like a normal person. What a peaceful, relaxing day I have ahead of me. And the fact that I'm up in the middle of the night isn't stressing me out because I'll just be able to sleep in while Brian takes care of the kids.

Then there's the other element of Mother's Day which goes beyond all that lovely surface stuff: self-evaluation. How am I doing as a mother? How are my children doing? Are their needs being met? What can I do to do better? In the end, will it be enough? Just how much counseling are my children going to need?

Honestly, it takes a lot of effort not to torture myself when I think about these things. And, honestly, I think about them a lot. I worry I'm not parenting my children in the way I should, or could. I worry these years are going to pass by and I'm going to have a long list of regrets and "I wish I would haves." I worry my children are going to have more "issues" than normal because I'm managing to screw them up. Does everyone feel like this? Sometimes I wish I could just push the pause button so I could get myself together and make sure I'm ready to give them everything they need. But would I ever feel ready?

I pray about this a lot. My feeling, more than anything, is to enjoy them, love them, encourage them, nurture them. I'm trying. And I'm trying to forgive myself when I fall short.