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.

Fastest Way to Melt My Heart

I got this in an email approximately 2 1/2 minutes ago. I wasted no time getting it on the blog.

Thank you so much for this Leeanne!

National Sugar Cookie Day

John was the sole munchkin in scouts today (Anna gets double brownie points for planning an activity for just one boy) and they made sugar cookies. Coincidentally, as Anna discovered, today really is National Sugar Cookie Day. What are the odds?

(They were delicious by the way!)

Chuck Norris

Thanks to my young brothers-in-law, I have an appreciation for Chuck Norris jokes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Chuck Norris fan. I've never seen one of his movies, and judging by the jokes, I probably don't want to. But these jokes are funny. Here are a few of my favorites:

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris died ten years ago, but the Grim Reaper can't get up the courage to tell him.

Chuck Norris can slam revolving doors.

Superman owns a pair of Chuck Norris pajamas.

Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

Bill Gates lives in constant fear that Chuck Norris' PC will crash.

Chuck Norris plays russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver... and wins.

Chuck Norris' calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris can build a snowman out of rain.

When Chuck Norris enters a room, he doesn't turn the lights on, he turns the dark off.

When Chuck Norris looks in a mirror the mirror shatters, because not even glass is stupid enough to get in between Chuck Norris and Chuck Norris.

The only time Chuck Norris was wrong was when he thought he had made a mistake.

If you have five dollars and Chuck Norris has five dollars, Chuck Norris has more money than you.

When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the Earth down.

Chuck Norris doesn't wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.

Botanical Gardens Flashlight Tour

You may want to prepare yourself. What I'm about to say may shock you.

I've hardly been on the computer at all for the last FOUR DAYS!! Wow. I know. I can't believe I didn't self-destruct either. But now I'm back and I'm playing catch up.

Last Thursday we took a little trip to the Desert Botanical Garden. I'd never been there before, and since it's so hot right now, we decided to go on the Flashlight Tour, which starts at 7 pm.

The first thing that happens when you get there, is some nice old man gives everyone a mini fan to hang around their necks. Everyone smiles and says "thank you" even though what we really want to do is shake his hand and say "Bless you! Bless you!" Anyway, here's John with his fan, in front of some big ol' barrel cacti (really this is just an excuse to post my favorite pic of John even though it has no story attached to it):



Then you meet in the amphitheatre for a little run down of how it all works. They give you a map of the trail, which shows where the different stations are. It's a self-guided tour so you can go at your own pace, but at each station is someone to explain what you're looking at.

The first station we went to was the Agave station, which apparently is the name of the cactus that looks like this:

I've seen these my whole life and never knew what they were called. Yet, I was so not interested in this station that I didn't even take a picture.

I guess this is a good time to say that I'm not terribly interested in cacti, and thought this whole experience would be good exposure for the kids but boring for me. Did I already say the only reason we decided to do this was because going to a local botanical garden is an activity in John's scout book? No? Oh, well trust me. That was the only reason.

But it turned out this was more fun than I thought it'd be. And I did learn something about the Agave that I thought was cool. There's tons of varieties, and when they bloom, the shoot grows a full six inches a day.

I gotta admit. That's impressive.

On the way to the next station we saw a boy holding this little guy:

It's an albino king snake, named Casper. He even let our boys pet the snake.

Guess what else? I even pet the snake!! (Sorry, no photographic evidence.)

Next was a station I read about on the website before we came, and yet I STILL decided to come: the tarantula station. For any of you who don't know me well, please refer to the definition of hysterical to learn how I react to spiders.

I pretty much decided ahead of time that while my boys would think I was the coolest mom ever for giving them a chance to look at creepy, hairy spiders, I would simply smile and wave at them... from afar.

Again, I surprised myself. I got right up close and got a picture of this (without so much as a shudder):

In the cage is a live tarantula. In the little box is the exoskeleton of one. Like snakes, tarantulas shed their skin, though not as often.

There must have been some magic anti-arachnophobia dust sprinkled around that place, cuz I just thought that was cool!

There were scorpions at this station too. Scorpions = not cool.

The other thing I liked about this station was that a young teenager was in charge of explaning all the facts about the critters here. I thought that must be a great experience, and it set my little mommy wheels a-turnin. I'd love to see my boys do something like that.

In between stations, which wasn't terribly far, there were... you guessed it... lots and lots of cacti. This made me glad we came for an activity which travels maybe only 1/3 of the trails at the garden, and which offers stations to break things up. I just would not be interested enough to walk around and look at nothing but cacti.

But this little part I liked. It was covered to protect these southern Mexico varieties from our Sonoran desert heat - funny huh?

What's up with this one? Look at the growth on top. It looks like... well, I'll let you decide what it looks like:

Next was the snake station. The boy with Casper showed up at this one and was teaching too.

I actually wanted to hold this snake, but only got to pet it.

Then there was the Mesquite station. I really do love trees that look older than rocks and water. Look at the size of this Mesquite tree:

See the sap coming out of the bark?

Native Americans would gather the sap and form it into crystals, which they then used as throat lozenges. (Sorry for the fuzzy picture, but an example of this is in the little box below.)

Saguaro station. This guy was cool. Here, he's demonstrating how to knock down the fruit of a saguaro. (Hint: use big stick.)

According to him, the seeds are messy but yummy:

I don't know if you can tell, but that's a picture of the fruit, and another cut open to show all the black seeds inside. See the cross section of a saguaro on the table? I thought that was cool.

"How big is a saguaro that's one year old?" he asked.

Hold up your hand. Now look at your pinky nail. Now imagine half of your pinky nail:

That's how big a saguaro is when it's one year old. That's also why most saguaro seeds grow up to be food for birds, and only 1/1000 ever grow to maturity.

See all the holes in the saguaro above? Those are made by woodpeckers, and this is what that hole looks like on the inside:

Woodpeckers use it as a nest only once. Other birds tend to move in once the woodpecker is done with it. Also, the woodpeckers put their eggs directly inside this thing (yes, I forgot the technical name, it's not really a "thing") without bringing in any soft material at all. Tough little baby woodpeckers!

This wasn't a station, just a display of sorts: the Cholla Roasting Pit. I like thinking about the daily life of Native Americans who lived here so long ago.

By this time it was getting dark enough to use the flashlights. Here's Ben at the frog station down by the pond:

It made me think of when we saw the frogs in Texas. They were croaking up a storm too.

This is how dark it was:

And this is with my flash:

The interesting thing about this pond is that even though the pond is man-made, they did not bring in the frogs. The frogs just came on their own. The lady said that if we built a pond in our backyard, frogs would come to it. It made me want to build a pond in my backyard.

Except that then we'd have a pond in our backyard. Yuck.

Anyway, here's a pic of one of the big bullfrogs there:

Last stop was the gila monster. I think on the way to this stop, Chris thought we were really going to see a monster, because he said, "I don't like gila monsters." Once I explained what it was, he was fine. I kinda thought a real monster would have been interesting, but this guy was cool too:

I guess he'd had enough of my kids and their flashlights, because he started clawing to get out of the cage.

The lady said she'd never seen him do that before. Take a bow kids. :)

The whole thing took us about an hour and a half, and turned out to be a lot of fun. It's not something I'd want to do over and over again, but I recommend doing it at least once. If you're one of those people who like cacti (hi mom!) then you'd enjoy it even more.

"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."

Abraham Lincoln

"Second Goodbyes"

Okay, I've just spent the last three hours on the phone with my mother, and I really have a ton to do, but Brian informed me last night that it's been too long since I put up a new post, so here it is. ;) Actually, I wanted to keep my post about Uncle Michael and Michelle at the top for awhile. That whole experience pretty much rocked and I wasn't in any hurry to bury it with new posts. But this IS a blog, so I guess I need to move on at some point! ;)

I've been meaning to post this video for awhile now. It's absolutely hilarious. Now, the bad thing about posting YouTube videos, is that when the video is done playing, YouTube automatically puts up little ads for more videos you can watch. I have no way to control what those videos are, and usually they're pretty lame.

Not so with this, I expect. If you see the other videos by Marian with this same background of books, do yourself a favor and click on them. This lady is seriously funny. Enjoy!

Edit: Egads! Okay, there's a new video up by her that is... um... well let's just say that the videos I recommend are these: Shopping in New York, Designer Shops, Plastic Surgery, Losing Your Passport. Watch the others at your own risk! ;)