Preschool Museum of Art

Cutie Pie’s preschool art and music program was this morning.  In true creative style, the mom who usually plans the event outdid herself.  It was truly a thing to behold.  I have lots of pictures to share but they simply don’t do justice to how cool it was.  I don’t know what could possibly be done to top it next year…

The show began at 11 AM in the church sanctuary where the children assembled to sing lots of fun springtime/Mother’s Day/Father’s Day songs.

The preciousness was almost too much to handle.  *sigh*

After the music portion was complete we met up with Cutie Pie at his class table in the fellowship hall.  There waiting for us were lots of fun Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts that Cutie Pie had made.

We made our way out into the hall to see Cutie Pie’s class art display in the art gallery.  Each class had an 8′ table and an 8′ x 4′ board on which to display all of their artistic treasures.  It was amazing to see what all of the children have made over the school year!

This year, the food was set up outside on the breezeway between the chapel and the church administration building.  Each snack was staged to look like famous paintings.  Ingenious, I say!

There was a photo op for the girls and a photo op for the boys set up on the lawn near the iced coffee and punch table.

One of the newest features of this year’s art show was the sculpture garden.  I take credit for this idea and I also took a lot of crap from some very stressed out teachers who did not want to participate.  In the end, everyone managed came up with a class sculpture for the garden.  I was amazed by how lovely and different all the pieces turned out!!!  For all of their complaining, the teachers ended up thinking the garden was a nice addition to the art show.

Cutie Pie’s class worked with a local artist (who happens to also be one of the student’s grandmother) to create Tilly the sea turtle.  It took the class many work sessions over a couple of months to create the sculpture from paper mache and I think it turned out beautifully!!!

In the end, I managed to survive not one but two heartwarming/heart wrenching performances this week.  My little boys are growing up in the blink of an eye.  What can I do to slow this down?  I simply don’t like this brutal march of time.

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Museum Mania

You would think that after torturing our kids with an epic walk around DC J and I would have taken it easy on them.

You would be wrong.

When the taxi dropped us off at the Air and Space Museum it was go time for the Smithsonian museums.  The boys perked up quite a bit after lunch and were happy to spend time exploring all the amazing displays and exhibits.  The truly amaze me with their resilience.

We could have spent all day at the Air and Space Museum alone.  There were so many wonderful, monumental, revolutionary things to behold.  I have many, many pictures that I won’t bore you with.  I’ll just say that I am a museum/history/information junkie and I loved every second of being there.

I will share this one photo though.  Oh, to be a stewardess in the 1960’s!!!  How cool is that pom-pom hat?  Don’t get me started on the serape.  Fabulous!  Airlines should bring this stuff back.  I could maybe do without seeing the go-go boots and hot pants making a comeback though…

We stayed just long enough for the boys to catch story and craft time.  A lovely Indian lady read a myth about how the constellations were formed.  The the children were given black paper, crayons and star stickers to make their own Big Dipper to take home.  My boys loved it!  They made two drawings each.

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On our way to the Museum of Natural History we made a little detour through the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden to relax by the fountain.  It was a hot afternoon and the brisk water felt so refreshing on our tired feet.  We stayed for quite a while people watching.  There was a lone duck in the water circling around like he was king of the fountain   As you can see, many other people had the same idea…

*****

We eventually made it to the Museum of Natural History where we saw everything from dinosaur bones to the Hope Diamond.  The building that houses the museum is stunning.  I spent more time admiring the architecture than anything else.  I had had enough of rocks, fossils and moths after about an hour and suggested that we head toward the American History Museum before it closed for the day.

*****

This was my primary reason for wanting to stop by the American History Museum.

Julia Child’s kitchen!

I love to cook and remember watching her show when I was little.  I enjoyed the movie Julie and Julia too.  So, I just had to see the kitchen for myself.  It was quite a custom set up for its day.  The quirky touches, like the painting of three cats hanging from the cabinet door, were charming.

For some reason, all I could think about was her cooking up aspics in this very room.  Aspics gross me out.  Gelatinous meat?  Why?

Anyway, it was cool to also see the shunned Greenough statue of George Washington.  By coincidence, mom had given me a copy of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol several weeks before our trip.  I finished reading it right before we left.  So, it was interesting to see the statue discussed in the book in person.

I went to check out the pop culture artifacts while J took the boys to see the locomotives and ships.

I rejoined my family in the transportation section of the museum.  We spent a lot of time roaming around the old cars, trains, trucks and buses.  I found the audio accounts of a rural bus driver and his family particularly fascinating.  I listened to all three stories trying to imagine what it was like to travel 1 hour from a farm to school each morning with only a hot brick wrapped in newspaper to keep you warm.

It was all very interesting.  I love this kind of stuff but it doesn’t make for very fascinating blog reading so I tried to stick to the highlights.  Stay tuned for more DC trip stories including an Internet person I met I.R.L!