Welcome to the Museum of Curated Artifacts

Topher turned our Great Room into a museum. He led me on a tour.

This is the polar bear exhibit,

the cat exhibit,

the dinosaur exhibit,

and the hot air balloon exhibit.

He cut up a piece of printer paper and drew tickets on each one. I needed to give him my ticket before I toured the museum. 

I'm glad he loves museums enough to create his own.

New England In the Summer

This was not our year for FSY. Our congregation was assigned to go last summer, and most of the youth went. But we were still isolating, so Peter and Cooper stayed home. This year our Bishop encouraged the boys to sign up as soon as it was open to off-year participants. I meant to sign up right away, but we were waiting on a scheduling issue, so it took a few weeks. By the time I was able to register them, the closest For the Strength of Youth Conference was full. So, I searched for the next closest. That is why Bryan spent aaaalllll of last Monday driving Peter and Cooper up to their camp in Amherst, Massachusetts. 

He drove up, dropped them off, then turned around and drove back, all in one day. That made for a very, very, long day for Bryan. We decided to break up the trip to retrieve them into two days, in part because we had to collect them by 7:30 on Saturday morning and we had no desire to leave our house at 3AM. Because Phoebe had left for Bishop's camp the day before, she missed out on our drive up to New England. We left in the early afternoon on Friday.

New England has a lot of trees. I'm sure it's beautiful in the fall, but the green of summer is my favorite.

I believe the last time we took a road trip with only two kids was in 2009. For real life.

It was about a four and a half hour drive up to Amherst. We took the scenic route instead of the city route which possibly saved us a few hours, depending on traffic.

We checked into our hotel for the night, then drove around campus to see where we would need to pick them up the next morning. I started taking pictures of areas on campus, then texting them to Peter and Cooper to show them where we were. Apparently we just missed Cooper at one building.

Cooper told us that the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is the tallest library in the US. I didn't get to go inside, but I did get out of the car to take a picture with it!

As we were driving around campus I found this lab and sent the picture to my sister, Paige. Maybe she's secretly a scientist in Massachusetts? By the way, I cannot spell the name of that state. I have had spell check correct me every time I've typed it.

The next morning Peter and Cooper were sad to leave the new friends they had made, but happy to see their siblings.

We could have gotten right on the road for home, but a friend had told me about a museum in town that I wanted to visit and it didn't open until 10 o'clock. So we got some breakfast, then visited Emily Dickinson's grave ("Oh! Statue world!" as Topher said when we walked into the cemetery), then found a fun park so Topher and Sophie could get some energy out. It was, in fact, such a fun park that Topher was completely filthy when we left. We had to detour back to our hotel room (thankfully we still had some time before checkout) so he could have a bath.

Then, with Topher clean and wearing his clean-ish clothes from the day before, we went to the Eric Carle Museum! This car is outside the museum. When we saw it I said to the kids, "Oh look, it's the Very Hungry Car-tipllar." Who says only dads can make up those jokes?

The museum was small, but lovely. Only the first room was dedicated to Eric Carle. They have a huge collection, but it appears that they rotate out pieces for different exhibits. This one was about his time in Japan and the collaborative work he did there. These two quotes spoke to my heart.

Visitors were invited to sit and create their own books after viewing Carle's work.

The second room was a collection about the artist Claire A. Nivola. I wasn't familiar with her work and I LOVED it! Her use of color and line was so beautiful.

The final exhibit (there was a fourth, but I only found out when I found the link for the museum to add to this post, oops) was all about depictions of horses in literature. It was delightful. Topher appreciated the puppet theater.

This was my favorite piece from the room.

Guess what else that exhibit had on display! A real Caldecott medal! I sent this picture to a few friends and one of them responded that she didn't realize they were actual, physical medals. I hadn't realized either, but now that I've seen one it makes sense that they would be more than just a symbol added to the front of beautiful picture books.

As we finished our visit we of course had to stop in the bathroom since we would be on the road for many hours. The bathroom was themed to match the museum! If you know the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, then these characters will look familiar.

Our drive home was mostly uneventful, except when we had to pull of the freeway and find a bathroom right away because Topher had consumed two kid sized sodas and a Frosty from Wendy's. We found a port-a-potty at a park. He was NOT impressed.

Pennsylvania has fewer trees than Massachusetts (ha! I corrected my own misspelling that time!), but it's still pretty.

We got back into town minutes before Phoebe returned from camping. We had just enough time to drop off our stuff and go pick her up. It was nice to have everyone back together.

President Phoebe

A few weeks ago Phoebe's class held a President Museum. Each kid picked a President of the US to research and represent during a morning gathering for parents and the other third grade classes. Phoebe chose Warren G. Harding. Cooper let her borrow his suit for the presentation. I darkened her eyebrows and used dry shampoo to add white to her hair.

Topher really enjoyed watching Phoebe pretend to be someone else.

See the circle on the table to the side of Phoebe? Each of the kids had one of those. The parents had to tap the circle to activate the presentation. The students had each written and then memorized a list of facts about their president.

Each student had a pose that they adopted when they weren't giving their memorized speech. This was Phoebe's, based on a photo she found online of Harding.

Here it is again, from a different angle.

About twenty minutes in the whole class gathered on the stage and sang patriotic songs for the parents. Phoebe was in charge of pushing FDR in her wheelchair. She wanted to make sure we all knew the chair was a prop and that her friend was actually fine.

Phoebe did a great job and it was fun to watch her perform!

Grow Your Mind

After our time at the Temple on Saturday morning, we visited the Franklin Institute. Each person got to choose one activity for us to do, then we spent a little time at each of the desired exhibits.

Sophie chose the heart exhibit because it includes a giant heart that you can climb through:

Phoebe, our lover of rocks, picked an exhibit about geology and weather.

I opted for an IMAX film on volcanoes. Here's something you might not know: Topher hates loud sounds (he tolerates his exceptionally loud siblings, in case you were concerned), so a movie with lots of lava explosions was not a great choice.

Cooper wanted to visit Newton's Lab, a room full of activities about motion.

Bryan voted for a traveling exhibit all about what to do in case you're in an emergency situation. They had a giant ball pit meant to teach the kids what to do in case of an avalanche. It was the highlight of the visit for all four kids big enough to enjoy it.

In this picture Sophie is waiting for a cascade of lightweight clear balls to come pouring onto her.

Cooper, falling into the pit.

Peter, also falling into the pit, while Phoebe looks on.

Peter, whose current educational aspirations include earning six different bachelor's degrees in various kinds of engineering, picked an exhibit all about machines.

Topher participated where he could, spent a lot of time in his stroller, and really enjoyed the pizza we ate at the cafeteria. We can probably count that as his activity choice for the day.

We left early enough that we weren't fighting extra traffic and still had time for dinner and showers before bed, which was perfect.

Never Fear, Brooklyn is Here*

On Friday morning we slept in! I got a full nine hours of sleep. It was glorious. Then we made our way to the Stardust Diner just in time for the beginning of lunch. The servers all sing, which was really fun, though not conducive to conversation.

Do you see the server standing on the tables behind us? He was singing something from The Lion King (possibly He Lives In You?) and sounded fabulous.

Photo credit: Brett

Then we hopped on a subway and rode to Brooklyn, my first time in that borough. It didn't feel like NYC at all, there simply weren't enough people. We went to Prospect Park, which I know from the Danny Kaye movie Wonder Man, but Brett knew because the Battle of Long Island, a big Revolutionary War battle, was fought there. We hiked through the park, searching for the war memorials.

Photo credit: Brett

When we decided to head back to Manhattan we left the park on our search for the subway station and found this amazing Civil War memorial. After our year of reading about the Revolutionary War, we spent 2018 reading about the Civil War, so this was an especially cool discovery.

Then we made our way back to Federal Hall.

Photo credit: Brett

We saw a section of the balcony where George Washington stood when he was sworn in as the first President of the United States.

Photo credit: Brett

This is the bible that Washington placed his hand on to be sworn in.

Photo credit: Brett

After Federal Hall, we paid a visit to the Fearless Girl.

Photo credit: Brett

Then we saw her old neighbor, the bull.

Photo credit: Brett

Our next stop was unplanned, but delightful.We stumbled upon the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House, which is home to the National Museum of the American Indian and various national archives. I do love archives, so we wandered inside for a bit.

Photo credit: Brett

After that we went to the 9/11 Memorial. It is a beautiful and solemn place. I felt a great sense of reverence while there. I'm sure it was even stronger because the eighteenth anniversary of the attacks had been just a few days before.

Photo credit: Brett

At this point we were very hungry. We wandered a bit looking for food and unintentionally walked into Chinatown. Well, we couldn't let that opportunity pass us by, so we ate some yummy Chinese food. While we were there a group of four men sat at the table next to us. I suspect one of them was famous because he wore his sunglasses the whole time he was in the restaurant and appeared to have a couple body guards with him. No, I have no idea who he was.

Then we went to our third Broadway show of the trip. Hadestown, winner of the Best New Musical Tony for 2019, was phenomenal! It's the story of Orpheus and Eurydice set in a depression-era post-apocalyptic world. I know, it sounds weird, but it worked. And the music! Oh man, the music was gorgeous. I think the Fates were my favorite part, their harmonies were so tight, I loved it!

Photo credit: Brett

Photo credit: Brett

You'd think we'd be crashing at this point, and we kind of were, but we had to stay up a little longer. We filled our time with scrumptious cheesecake at Junior's. Yes, I will sometimes eat cheesecake. I figure it's mostly protein, right?

Photo credit: Brett

Photo credit: Brett

Then we stumbled out onto Times Square just in time for the Midnight Moment, a semi-immersive art exhibit shown on the digital billboards in Time Square from 11:57 to midnight every night. We had the time slightly wrong so we sort of missed it. No, we saw it, we just didn't realize what it was until it was over.

Photo credit: Brett

Photo credit: Brett

And that's when we finally got our tired selves back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

*What am I quoting now?