Sun July 13, Summer Day 42, Staycation Day 7

:::sigh:::  It's over.  Today was our last day of vacation (stay-cation!).  I'm a little bummed because life has to go back to normal now, but at the same time, I'm grateful that we got this time together.  I want to whine that it's over, but I really can't fuss.  Larry & I have a date night planned next week.  And a month from now (more or less) we're flying out of state to visit a friend of mine for a couple days.  The weekend after that, I'm going to Women of Faith.  But it seems like summer is flying by pretty fast.  And I want it to last.  (anybody want to cry for me now?  ha ha!)

Today, Larry decided to go to church like a good boy, however he couldn't go to our church because well...he works there.  If he showed up there during his vacation time, people would wonder why he wasn't teaching his class or helping during the altar service.  And so, he went to the First Assembly of God here in town.  The kids & I were worn out from our week of busy-ness, so we chose to stay at home & just relax.  We slept a little later than usual, ate pancakes for breakfast, hung out watching movies & TV and then made lunch about time for Larry to come home.  After lunch, we went to the Tyler Museum of Art.

Today they had a Family Day.  We weren't sure exactly what "Family Day" meant, but we wanted to see the elephant paintings exhibit & one thing we did know....family day means "FREE"!  So we went.  (NOTE:  These were not paintings OF elephants, but ones done BY elephants!)

When we got there, we saw a sign that said you could not take pictures inside the gallery, but if I was to blog about it, I had to get a picture, right?  When I spotted 2 people taking pictures very openly, I decided to stick it to the man & take a picture myself.  (ha ha!)  But honestly, I'm too much of a rule follower to do it so obviously like they were!  So, I held my camera as I had been doing the whole time & very nonchalantly & covertly snapped a picture without actually AIMING the camera.  I had no idea if I'd actually get a picture of something or not.  I mean, after all, being the sneaky photographer I am, I couldn't let someone catch me looking at the LCD screen to see how the pic turned out!  And this is what I got!

I had to crop quite a bit for that picture to look right.  The rest looked more like this:

They had a video playing to show how the paintings are done.  They actually had paintings done by cockroaches & rhinoceruses too!  Very interesting to watch them do the paintings...and fun to look at the finished products!

After walking through the gallery, we were led to the "classroom" where the very over-enthusiastic docents directed the kids to sit down & "paint like an elephant".  The project they had planned for the kids to do was really directed at children more along the lines of 2 to 5 year olds, so my kids were not exactly excited about participating.  Samuel & Sarah made a picture quickly so we could get out of there & were a little frustrated when they were directed to hang the picture on a wall of all the other kids' paintings--where they had to LEAVE it.  They were a little irritated that they made the picture & couldn't take it home!  Oh well, we have tons of other pieces of artwork of theirs.  After making their pictures, they were given snacks & we sat in the bookstore area of the museum to eat it.

We had told the kids before going in that this was a "fancy" place & they needed to be on their best behavior.  When Larry lingered in the bookstore area a little too long, the kids began to wear out on the sitting up straight, using nice manners & being polite.  So we went outside to walk around a bit while we waited for him.  There is a fountain right outside the door, so I posed the kids for a picture (of course!).

Sarah was feeling silly & tried another pose.  It was just a fake, though.  She didn't actually fall in.  She just wanted to look like she did!

We went back in just in time for Larry to see another exhibit that he wanted to look through.  It was an exhibit of Jewish artwork from artists during the Holocaust & soon afterward.  The kids & I made a quick lap through the room (it was a small room) but he wanted to read each little plaque under the pieces, so the kids & I headed to the van to wait for him.  Samuel had a lot of "sillies" to shake out when we got there.  He wanted me to take a video of him getting out all his goofyness, so I obliged him.  I tried to post it here, but AOL is being stinky tonight, so if you want to see the video, email me!

After the museum, we headed home for burgers cooked on the grill and a little more family time before Savannah headed off to spend the night with my niece.  I guess life truely is back to normal now.  Tomorrow I'll go pick her up, run to the post office, take Samuel to daycamp.....you know, the regular mom stuff.

Thanks for keeping up with our week of staycationing this week!  Tomorrow the blog goes back to regular stuff!