Ansel on Art

Just randomly I asked Ansel what his favorite paintings in our house were. He launched right into an explanation, so I had to pull out my phone to record him. Apparently, he doesn't care about the Terpsikhorovs (sorry, Nana). He's a much bigger fan of Brad Aldridge.

First Family Football Game

Last week, we went to our first high school football game. High school football in Texas is a lot different from high school football when I played. For starters, we didn't have a jumbotron.

The kids had a great time. They especially liked the hot cocoa, popcorn and Frito pie. Louisa was a big fan of waving the rally sign.

And as with all events that go on past 9:30 pm, this one eventually put the Booch to sleep.

Banshee Artists

Hi. This is Greg guest-posting.

The editing company I work with in Dallas had their 3rd annual art show last night. Their own artists and their friends are given 10"x 10" canvases, which are sold for $50 each, with all the money being donated to the local children's hospital.

The producer I work with gave me three canvases so Henry, Elsa and Ansel could participate. I brought them with me to Utah and all three kids spent an afternoon painting scenes from my mom's garden. Here are Henry and Elsa with their pieces (Ansel was on my back as I shot this).

There were some really amazing pieces there last night. This one was painted by a guy who was one of the chief artists on The Iron Giant.

This was a great 3D piece. Sorry it's such a blurry picture.

After walking through and looking at all the art, we returned to the Banshees' work and were floored to realize all three of their pieces were sold! We're not sure who bought them. All we know is the tags below each painting were missing.

So our kids made $150 for the Children's Museum, and they've all sold exactly as many canvases as Vincent Van Gogh did in his lifetime. Can't wait for next year's exhibit.

On the Road Again

We just made the drive from Utah back to Dallas, taking a slightly different route this time.

We stopped at Four Corners National Monument. Here are four kids in four different states. We're glad no one got lost. We're usually pretty good parents, but at one point, Louisa wandered over into Utah while the rest of the family was in Arizona.

On our way to Santa Fe, we noticed a brown highway sign for a Mormon Battalion Monument. We figured we'd better stop. It was kind of cool. Although there sure were a lot of broken beer bottles nearby. Hope it wasn't from a recent Mutual activity.

We stopped in Santa Fe just long enough to visit the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, which we all loved. It was very small, but with some amazing pieces in it. O'Keeffe's work was, of course, amazing. But we were surprised to see work by Man Ray, Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Norman Rockwell, too.

The last day of the trip, we drove from Amarillo to Plano. As you might imagine, we have no pictures of that worth posting.

We Like Ike!

We just drove from Texas to Utah for the 4th of July. (Actually for most of July.)

One of the highlights from the trip was stopping at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Museum and Library in Abilene, Kansas.

We have a goal to visit all of the Presidential Libraries with our kids. Not sure how long that's going to take, but with the LBJ and Bush Senior libraries about three hours south of Dallas, Clinton's just northeast in Arkansas, and George W's planned just down the street from us at SMU for 2013, we'll get a pretty good start.

Visit Wrench Works

Greg's starting a new blog for the summer, inspired by this DIY article in Wired. It's called Wrench Works. Take a look. Should be fun.

Legally, I don't think I can ask you to click on the banner ads on the site. But I can probably tell you that all revenue (probably 36 cents-worth) will go to the kids' college funds.

Freshly-Painted Room

A while back, we decided we'd had enough with the color of our room. I'm not sure what the label on the bucket said, but I'd describe the color of our walls as "Vomited Orange Juice."

We thought we'd like some kind of blue. And "Valley Forge Brown" looked really good on the label. But once the samples were on our walls, the blues weren't satisfactory. And our doubts about Valley Forge Brown was confirmed when Henry walked in and said, "Whoa! That looks like diarrhea!" Not really a big improvement over Tang barf.

We ended up settling on Diplomat Gray. As soon as we started painting, we knew we were going to love it.

This is our room now, and we love it.

Now we just need to take care of the rest of our house. Not sure when we'll get to it. We're just slowly eating the elephant.

Dallas Museum of Art

Last week we went to the Dallas Museum of Art. After visiting the Kimball over President's Day, we were expecting another nice, but small museum. We were in for a big surprise.

The DMA is not only huge, it's gorgeous. The hallways are large and interestingly shaped. When we arrived, a jazz band was playing in this open area decked out with huge glass Chihuly flowers. The kids were interested to learn that not only had their Aunt Amelia taught yoga to Dale Chihuly's wife in the Chihuly home, but the artist wears an eyepatch that kind of makes him half-artist, half-pirate.

Elsa loves Georgie O'Keeffe, and we were glad the DMA has two of her works on display. (Elsa' is posing with her Flat Stanley.)

Not sure who painted this. But it made us a little homesick. It's offers a better view than the one we had when we visited it in person.

In the Asian and Pacific art section, Elsa discovered these warriors. Apparently this art really spoke to her.

Ansel can spot a Modrian a mile away. Actually, I guess anyone can. But it's one artist he knows, so we're happy about that.

We had a great night at the DMA. We only stayed an hour (hard to do more than that with four kids in a "do-not-touch" museum). But it was a great victory for us when we were leaving to have Elsa ask, "Can we come back here tomorrow?"

Henry's Big Guns

Last weekend, Henry went with his scout troop to Camp Wisdom to fire some BB guns and get his shooting pin. Here he is outside the fort with his friend Jack.

That's a real Red Rider BB gun he's firing. And no one shot their eyes out.

They didn't bring a flag for the Pledge of Allegiance. But the one on Henry's sleeve worked just fine.

Most of the kids got tired of shooting after a while. But Henry and Jack kept firing until they ran out of BBs, and talked about saving up for their own guns the whole drive home. Not sure that's going to happen. But if it does, neighborhood rabbits, beware!

Fort Worth

We took our first trip to Fort Worth for President's Day. We started off with a trip to the Kimbell Museum. Not exactly the Louvre or the Chicago Art Institute, but it's free and they did have a Cezane and a Monet.

Not sure who this is a picture of (someone Spanish), but Elsa's doing her best impersenation of him.

Later we went to the Stockyards. This is real Texas. We saw people with hats and boots and missing teeth and everything. Twice a day, they bring the cattle out into the streets. We couldn't believe the size of these horns! Everything's bigger in Texas. (This street, by the way, was full of BBQ joints and smelled fantastic. Wonder if the cows knew how much better they'd be smelling with a little dry rub.)

We ate lunch at Joe T. Garcia's - a restaurant that's been recommended to us ever since we landed last May. The food was good, but Greg and I still think it's pretty tough to be Chuy's. Although Ansel seemed to appreciate the meditation pool.

Elsa turns 7!

Elsa's birthday was on February 19th. She made a pretty good haul. I think Henry's used the pogo stick more than she has. When she finished opening up her presents she said the words no parent who was up until midnight getting a party ready wants to hear: "You know what I really wanted?"

Hesitantly we asked her. "More birthday cards," she said. We explained that birthday cards usually don't come from parents (at least until you're in college), and that she'd be getting some from her friends later that day. That brightened her up. And other that having another confirmation that she's a little nuts, we were very relieved, too.

This year's theme was an Artist's Party. My cousin Brittany, who is an excellent illustrator, came to show the girls how to draw Tinkerbell and unicorns (and the girls' renditions were surprisingly good). While Brittany had the illustrators at one station, girls at another station were painting their canvases.

Just so they weren't at a loss and suffer a humiliating artists block in the middle of the party, we gave them the theme "Your Best Summer Day." We had lots of blue skies and ice cream cones. But only Elsa gave us an ice cream cone floating in the ocean near a pink palm tree. Very Dali.

My artistic contribution was this rainbow cake that I found on the Martha Stewart website. It's a double rainbow all the way!

Oh, you're sick, are you?

A couple weeks ago, Henry said he was sick enough to stay home from school. But this is what he was doing by mid-afternoon.

I'm not saying he wasn't sick - he really was. I guess you're just never too sick to rock.

Henry's introduction to the NBA

Greg took Henry to his first NBA game last night. It was the Mavericks vs. the Cavs. It looks like Henry's gagging at the Tyson Chandler poster, but it was just his eight-year-old brain confusing machismo aggression with excitement.

And you know those t-shirts they catapult into the stands between quarters? What are the chances that at his first game, Henry would catch one? Between this and the free Tyson Chandler bobblehead doll he picked up, the kid's going to think NBA games are a giant swag-fest.

Final score

Mavs: 99

Cavs: 96

Henry: Super happy

(By the way, this was Cleveland's 25th straight loss in a row. Ouch.)

Is that you, Texas?

Last week, we were hit with some crazy snow. Tuesday, the roads were so iced over, newscasters were telling people as early as 6am to stay off the highways. Greg worked from home. And school was closed for the rest of the week.

It's all melted by now. But we sure had a good time hanging out and doing absolutely nothing!