Museum Fun with Pirates

My kids are in the midst of their Spring Break, which for me is Spring Over Time with all of them at home and constantly fighting. There are moments of peace and happiness, but mostly one of them is telling me about some horrible thing one of the other ones is doing. Nina is our best tattler (of course as the youngest it is in her job description). Her information is never self-incriminating and almost always exciting or startling. This morning is was, "Mommy, Sophie BIT Ben!" Awesome. First, I told Sophie that that is disgusting and she might want to think about where Ben's hands have been before biting his finger. Then, I told her that biting was completely unacceptable behavior. It was my first point that made her say "Oh yeah, GROSS!" Problem solved. And we are only 2 days into this whole break thing...

So. We decided it might be better to get out of the house today. We went to The Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Adrian took the day off so we had a whole day of family museum fun, with some Blue Bell ice cream from Russell Stover thrown in afterward. We spent about 3 hours looking at all the regular exhibits in the museum (which was great) and then went to the National Geographic Real Pirates Exhibit. It was super interesting. Nina got a little bored, but the rest of us had a great time.

The exhibit is about the sunken pirate ship, The Whydah, which was recently discovered in the waters near Cape Cod. Massive amounts of pirate artifacts and treasure was also found in the ship wreck. The Whydah was a slave trade ship that was taken over by pirates and then became an infamous pirate ship. This ship was as big as Black Beard's ship. Pretty cool. It was interesting to find out that the sailors /pirates on pirate ships were up to 60% black and often there were also Native American and South American Indian pirates. Did you know that?? They also shared the spoils of their conquests /plunderings evenly amongst the sailors. Who would have thought pirates divided booty up fairly and kept record of it. Of course they murdered and pillaged, so I'm not trying to say the pirate life was lovely, but it was interesting to find out about "the pirate code". In the middle of the exhibit you got to go aboard a replica of the Whydah which was really neat. It felt like I was walking around on one of the ships from The Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. And it was also neat how you loosely follow the real-life stories of 4 of the pirates on the Whydah, finding out what their job was on the ship and what happened to them in the end. One of the pirates, John King, was only 8 or 9 years old. The kids also got to try their hand at tying knots and raising jolly rogers. Did you know the jolly roger was raised when one of the crew members died? It was all the interesting pirate tidbits that made the exhibit fascinating.

That was probably way too much information, but really it was a very neat exhibit and I'm glad we went. The kids had a good time and hopefully they will remember today as our fun Spring Break day so the pressure will be off for me to makes things fun for the rest of the week.:) After the exhibit we went to the 4th floor of the museum to see its fantastic view of Denver. It was panoramic with the mountains in the back. Beautiful! And then we had ice cream on the way home. It was a lovely family day. So however the rest of this Spring Break goes at least we'll always have The Museum Day.

Welcoming Spring with Botticelli

Primavera, by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482 

Okay, so it seems like I only put up new art history images for holidays and season changes. And honestly that probably isn't the best idea since I'm sure artists don't see their life works as holiday decorations. Of course there are so many wonderful works out there that have nothing to do with holidays and seasons. But sometimes it just works. Like today. It was in the upper 70's today in my neck of the woods. Hello Spring! And all this Springness immediately brought to mind Botticelli's Primavera ("spring" in Italian).

I have loved this work of art ever since I saw it at the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence along with Botticelli's other famous work, The Birth of Venus. I love Botticelli's style. You can always pick out a Botticelli. The color and elongated beautiful figures are a dead give-away. This painting is considered one of the greatest and most popular works of Western art. The scene is described as an allegory of Spring or a celebration of the Earth's fertility. Yes, Spring and fertility are always intertwined in history and art. The scene is joyous (except for the right side with Zephrus accosting Chloris, but I'll get to that in a minute) with Venus the goddess of love as the central figure presiding over the festivities. She is accompanied by the 3 dancing Graces, who are being targeted by Cupid up above.  The god Mercury (maybe, some historians think it's Hermes) is on the left, his arm raised with some kind of rod to protect the grove from the whispy grey clouds above him (click on the picture to see the funny little clouds). Over on the right side is a strange scene with Zephrus (the god of the West Wind) grabbing Chloris whom he abducted and married and turned into a deity. So the distressed Chloris becomes the goddess of Spring pictured in the flowered dress spreading roses on the ground. A bit confusing, but that is what art historians generally think that scene on the right represents. Of course there are other interpretations and theories about all the figures, but I'm going with this one. (Wouldn't it be nice if all the old masters would've written an explanation for their paintings!) Overall it's meant to be happy and lovely and celebratory. Makes me want to wear flip flops, eat an orange, and dance a little jig. Happy Spring to you!!

Oscars Night

We love the Oscars around here. It started out that I loved the Oscars and would watch them every year (I view it as my Super Bowl) and Adrian would be on the computer or doing something else. Then a few years ago we discovered online Oscar ballots and ever since then it has become a friendly competition (friendlyish, but it wouldn't be a right without some smack talking and banter) between Adrian and I to see who can get the most categories right. It's awesomely fun! This year we let the kids fill out their own ballots, though none of them actually watched the show since it goes too late. They were super excited this morning to see how they did. The results: I got 13 right, Ben 8, Adrian 5, Sophie 5, and Nina 5. Didn't Ben do well!:)

As for the show itself, I was super excited that Colin Firth won best actor. Yay! His speech was very nice and self deprecatingly cute. Love that guy! And can I just say that I was over the top excited that Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails fame, won for best musical score for The Social Network. That's amazing! Seeing Trent Reznor in a tux looking well groomed and normal was awesome. I used to sketch crazy looking early 90's Trent on my notebooks in high school. It's nice to know we've all grown up including Trent and that he is a soundtrack composer now.

Then for the rest of the show. Hmm. I think there was a ton of cringe worthy moments, a lot more than normal. Kirk Douglas for one. The best supporting actress and the F bomb for another. And  as excited as I was to see Anne Hathaway and James Franco host the Oscars I just didn't think they worked very well together. Did anyone else notice that James seemed super stiff/distant and never seemed to even look at his co-host?? Their timing was a little off too. But then again they are actors and not comedians so I guess I should cut them some slack. Trying to be funny on live TV must difficult. I do miss the days of Billy Crystal and Steve Martin; they made it seem effortless. Even with all the awkwardness I still had a good time watching it and I don't think it hurt my enjoyment that I won our little ballot competition.:)

Our Valentine's Day

I know this is more than a week overdue, but we had a very fun Valentine's day. We had our traditional Valentine's breakfast together; this year it was caramel pull-aparts with orange juice. And I gave everyone a book, candy, and Valentine. Adrian got a book of math riddles (and he loved it, oh how I love my geeky man), Sophie got The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan, Ben got The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and Nina got an Angelina Ballerina book. I got myself this copy of Jane Eyre - how cool is that?! Happy Valentine's day to me! Fun morning. Then when the kids got home from school and Adrian got home from work we had spaghetti and meatballs, which had also become a tradition I think because I really loved Lady and The Tramp when I was little. And after dinner we all went to Gnomeo and Juliet. The kids loved it. I think it was cute and entertaining, but must admit that the story of Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending just isn't right. But of course I wouldn't take my kids to a movie with a double suicide at the end... So Gnomeo and Juliet fit the bill for a fun Valentine's family movie night.

Just to add a little Ghost of Valentine's Past tidbit, for our first Valentine's day together I got Adrian a really nice copy of the tragedies of William Shakespeare thinking it was a super romantic gift - mostly because of how much I love Romeo and Juliet. Adrian thought it was super weird, not being a big Romeo and Juliet fan himself, but he still loved me so it all worked out.:)

False Positives

Yesterday was a weird day. It was great, but weird. Sophie had her long awaited appointment with an allergist. We wanted a second opinion on her food allergies from a specialist. We are very very glad we got this second opinion because they did the skin test and the results were negative. Negative. No allergies to eggs, peanuts, or fish. The blood test her pediatrician ordered apparently had false positives. Can you imagine if we hadn't gotten a second opinion?? False positives suck. Now, the only way to know for sure is for us to add back into her diet, slowly and one at a time: eggs, peanuts, and fish (not that she ever ate fish really, but I plan on giving her Caesar salad dressing with anchovies in it later). Last night we had Belgian waffles to start it off and this morning she was not sick. Yay. Big fluffy breakfast for dinner waffles!! She is looking forward to some scrambled eggs this weekend. She is happy. I am happy. This is awesome.

But, the thing that's really frustratingly weird is that now we still don't know what is or was wrong with Sophie. We stopped eggs, peanuts and fish and she got better. So of course we thought that's what it was. But now it's still the mystery illness that her doctors can't figure out. The allergist did say that you can develop food sensitivities after you've had a bad stomach flu and that's what might have set it all off. Let's hope it was that and she's all done with being sick. As we start giving her these foods I'm going to have my mental fingers crossed that the tummy troubles will have gone away too. Wish us luck!

Happy Valentine's Day

Romeo and Juliet by Jennie Harbour, c. somewhere around 1920

Happy Valentine's Day!! I hope you have a wonderful day with those you love!

I'm breaking from my Pre-Raphaelite Valentine's tradition and instead am bringing you this gorgeous illustration of Romeo and Juliet by Jennie Harbour, an early 20th century illustrator who worked for the Tucks Postcard Co. I saw it whilst searching for a Pre-Raphaelite images (even though it's not Pre-Raphaelite) and just couldn't pass it up. It's too pretty!! And perfect for Valentine's Day! This was an oil painting that was made into a print, especially for postcards. Can you imagine that kind of work being put into a modern postcard?? I love it's oh so lovely Art Nouveau style. The decoration and composition is just so curvy and organic. That's gorgeous Art Nouveau for you! And it's such a sensitive portrayal of this intimate scene were Juliet is saying good-bye to her new husband at dawn before he is exiled to Mantua, the last time they will see each other alive (well Romeo sees Juliet when she is alive, but he thinks she's dead...you know what I meant :)). This was probably produced somewhere before and near 1920, but it's super hard to get information on Jennie Harbour. She kind of fell off the map after working for Tucks for a few years. It was a hard world to be a female artist in the early 20th century. You can count the popular/successful female artists from the late 19th and early 20th centuries on one hand. But my goodness she was talented. If you googled her you'd be amazed at how beautiful and original her illustrations are. So there you go. Hope you like the image and I hope you have a wonderful day of love!

Mourning the Loss of Breakfast for Dinner

January has been a crazy month. Our ward split and though I am still primary secretary there has been a lot of work to do - organizing classes, getting new teachers their binders, meetings, and updating so many Excel lists... Really busy. But in the midst of this we've gotten some life altering news that has over shadowed all that busy-ness. Sophie has been diagnosed with multiple food allergies. Just before Christmas she started feeling really ill frequently. We took her to the doctor twice and they thought it was just junky holiday food that was making her sick. But then it persisted after the holidays were over and her doctor decided to do further tests. The testing process took a couple weeks and resulted in us figuring out she is allergic to eggs, peanuts, and fish. It has been a shock. How does an 11 year old suddenly become allergic to a bunch of food she's been eating since she was a toddler?? Isn't it crazy?! Shocking but also so darn sad. Sophie misses peanut butter and scrambled eggs and all manner of her favorite treats and candies. It's hard.

Of course we are very glad to know why she has been so sick and she has been feeling much better, but we are all in a weird kind of mourning. I find myself scrolling through my food blog trying to figure out how to make our favorite foods egg & peanut free and feeling depressed by the pictures of my favorite desserts that I can't make for FHE anymore. The loss of our Wednesday night breakfast-for-dinner favorites has been the saddest. We all love crepes, hootenannies, breakfast casseroles, waffles, quiche, pancakes, omelets, scrambled eggs, muffins... Eggs are so very yummy! There are some alternatives like biscuits and sausage gravy or eggless pancakes... Not as fun. It's a learning curve, figuring out how to get as excited about eggless, peanutless meals and treats. We can still have eggs in the house, Sophie just can't eat them, but of course we aren't going to all eat big fluffy pancakes or peanut butter cups in front of her. We aren't going to be mean. So, we are all going to be seriously cutting down on foods that Sophie is allergic to. Isn't it sad?? I feel sad. I'm sure I'll get over it and it will just be a part of our life, but I'm going to allow myself to be sad about the loss of breakfast for dinner; my strawberry crepes deserve that. I have a feeling IHOP will become a favorite date night spot for me and Adrian.