Royal Wedding Mania

I am super excited for the Royal Wedding! Aren't you?! I think it's all SO fun. I've been watching William and Kate specials on TV all week, much to Adrian's chagrin. My favorite special was "Kate's Gown of Renown" on Lifetime. They took a Kate Middleton look-alike to a bridal boutique and tried all different types of gowns on her and did her hair in a bunch of different ways. Awesome. I've watched the Today Show every morning and have loved their from London coverage. I'm gonna try my best to watch the wedding live tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I'll actually wake up that early. Coverage starts at 4am (wait does that mean 2am Mountain Time?)! I know I'll definitely watch it as soon as I do wake up (so happy for the invention of DVRs) and Nina says she'll watch it with me as long as I make some popcorn. Also, I'm planning an English dinner tomorrow evening: bangers and mash with mushy peas and jelly for dessert, or in American: sausages, mashed potatoes, mushed up peas, and Jello. One of the funniest things about this whole Royal Wedding business to me is the betting going on. Did you know British bookies are taking bets on what color hat the Queen will wear and whether or not Prince Harry will drop the wedding rings? Ha! I've listed some of the actual bets below with my own predictions. Happy Royal Wedding watching tomorrow!

What color hat will Queen Elizabeth wear? I say apricot, because that sounds queenly to me for some reason.

Which of these guests will be seen crying during the ceremony: Carole Middleton, Pippa Middleton, Michael Middleton, The Queen, Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Prince Phillip? I'm going with Carole and Michael Middleton, though apparently the tears have to be visible to count so this might be a long shot.

How long will William and Kate's first kiss be? Um, 3 seconds?

Will the wedding car break down on the way to Westminister Abbey? No, I think not.

Will William and Kate's first child be a boy or a girl? Girl. (I think it's hilarious that they are taking bets on this!)

Easter 2011

We had a really nice Easter. All our Easter Bunny stuff was done on Saturday. It was fun to see the kids running frantically all over the house to find the plastic eggs filled with goodies, which they then spent the next few hours gorging on. They each got a DVD and stuffed animal in their baskets along with various treats. Easter candy is wonderful, isn't it?! I probably ate as much candy as the kids did. Well maybe not quite as much, they gave themselves stomach aches, but I'm currently going through Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs withdrawal, so I had a lot.  I think I might be able to blackmail the kids later with all the early-morning-crazy-hair-and pajamas pictures.

On Sunday the kids got dressed in their new Easter outfits and actually sat happily for pictures and we got a smiling picture after only 2 takes. Miraculous. Last year I took about 75 pictures before they looked the right way and smiled! Then off to church. Church was wonderful. Easter Sunday is probably my favorite Sunday of the year. I love the emphasis on the Atonement and Resurrection. After church and naps (the one good thing about having church in the morning) we had a lovely dinner of ham, funeral potatoes, asparagus, and deviled eggs with angel food cake and strawberries for dessert. Everyone was sugared up and happy all weekend. I love Easter.

Jane Eyre

Lately I've been very much into the Bronte sisters (well Emily and Charlotte anyway). It used to be that I just liked Emily, you know Wuthering Heights and all, but then I read Charlotte's Jane Eyre last year and fell in love with it all over again. It is definitely more romantic than Wuthering Heights, because Jane and Edward truly love each other (you could argue the same for Cathy and Heathcliff, but their relationship is shall we say more complex). So naturally I have seen every single version of Jane Eyre that I could get my hands on and I absolutely love this Masterpiece Theater version (oh, disc 2 is great). Then I saw over the holidays movie posters for a new big screen 2011 Jane Eyre. It was hard to contain my excitement. Waiting until March 11th was near torture. I was super excited that Alice from Alice in Wonderland was going to play Jane and that it was suppose to be a beautiful and scary version. Beautiful! Scary! Yay! That is right up my alley. So the week of it's release came along ("Jane Eyre" was written boldly on Mar. 11th on all of my calendars) yet Jane Eyre was no where to be found in any movie theaters. I couldn't believe it! So I called all the different movie theater franchises here in CO (frantically the night before it's release) and found it had a very limited release on March 11th and probably wouldn't come to theaters in CO for a while. I was crushed. I honestly felt depressed. My name is Jenni and I am a movie junkie. I know. And I am especially a period costumed drama movie junkie. It is a weakness, I'll admit, but one I'm willing to live with. The whole weekend after its non-actual release date I was in a funk. Adrian and I went to Red Riding Hood instead and it was dismally non-Jane Eyre-ish. The romance wasn't even close. Nor was it scary. I remaining in my funk.

Until yesterday! My funk was cured. A small independent movie theater in the heart of Denver started playing Jane Eyre. Adrian and I went. Don't I have a very sympathetic and supportive husband?! The theather was the cutest and tiniest theater I have ever seen. Only 2 screens. It reminded me of the Alhambra of the early 90's in Pleasant Grove (Utah). And along with playing Jane Eyre which already won them huge patron points from me, they play fun midnight movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. How cool.

Back to the movie. It was AWEsome. It was everything a Jane Eyre should be with wonderful acting and beautiful imagery. Mia Wasikowska as Jane was perfect and Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester was very enjoyable. The costumes were great. The chemistry between Jane and Rochester was lovely. And yes it was even a little scary. At one part we all jumped. Nice. Being a condensed big screen version they skip over tons of course, but what they did include was right on. I just loved it! Adrian says it was very well done (he's sat with me through a couple different versions in varying stages of willingness so his opinion is also valid :)). I wish I could go over and over again, but it's playing so far away. Hopefully if the movie catches on it will be released in more theaters. Look what's happened with The King's Speech. So I'll hope for that. Otherwise if they could release it on DVD asap I would also be satisfied. Anyone want to head to Denver with me for another viewing??

*Yes that is me pointing to the Jane Eyre sign with almost crazed giddiness after arriving at the theater.

**Note: the frenzy and crazy of this post might remind you of my post about the late night trickery I employed to get Adrian to go with me to buy New Moon. Indeed my mind goes to this crazy movie place often. I need to work on it. Maybe.

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.:)