Thursday, November 10, 2005

Chip and the Giant Peach

Chip and the giant peach

We knew the last set of pictures would buy us a little time before we had to blog again, but now we’re stretching it. Actually, we’ve all been a little under the weather with various and not totally identifiable ailments - mostly colds and allergies - so we’ve needed all the rest we could get.

Last Saturday, we didn’t do much except tutor and go to a new church, where we all three made new friends. P invited the mommy and Gabriel’s new friend to MOMS Club, and they joined on Tuesday, but we’ll get to that. The church was tiny but very nice. It had beautiful chandeliers and an all-wood ceiling. The music was the kind we grew up with, and the cantor was a little shaky, unlike the professionals at the Cathedral, so we liked it a lot. The only problem was that the priest's microphone wasn't working, so we couldn't hear very much of the mass out in the cry area/narthex. Gabriel behaved really well, thanks to Cheerios, a book, and people-watching.

On Sunday, we did a lot of housework and earned an outing to the toy store and Starbucks. We got Chip a puzzle ("things that go in the air") and toy (a Winnie the Pooh airplane, of course) with his Halloween money, and we used our Starbucks gift certificate to relax and people-watch for a while. While we were there, Gabriel decided to age 18 years. Here he is with his coffee at work sweeping the store:

Starbucks sweep

On Tuesday, we had our MOMS Club new member breakfast at IHOP. There were probably over 20 babies there with their mommies, and we had a great time. Gabriel’s friend Ty made room for us so we could sit with them, and his new friend Christopher was there, too, and joined the club. Mommy ate chocolate chip pancakes for the first time at IHOP since she was a kid, and it was a special treat. Later that day, we went to a new park called Laurel Park and had a great time before we picked up Daddy from work.

Fast-forward to today. We went to the members-only preview of the expanded High Museum, and it was fantastic. We got to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibition, the relatively small African art section (briefly, until Chip tried to climb onto a throne), "Balzac Petanque", aka "Peaches and Pears" (by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, who did that crazy flag thing in Central Park among other, er, interesting things), and the Renzo Piano (he designed the new section of the High and is an amazing architect) architecture exhibit. We also listened to a great jazz band, where we waxed jazzy with an ivy league jazz professor. Gabriel played (who are we kidding, we all played) in the awesome new family art center, which is like a giant playground of art, where kids can draw with markers on glass while looking at their subject on the stool on the other side of the glass (see the photo of him drawing a "peaches and pears" still life, below - those things were everywhere!), build forts out of architectural pieces, dress like their favorite character in a painting, play with puppets, and create magnetic art on a metal wall. They can also build the High Museum from small blocks, and they can read books. We could have spent all day in that one room, but we moved on to a family workshop, where we all three pitched in to create a folk art angel, which is our first Christmas decoration this year. We had a great time. Oh, and we brought Flying Biscuit home for dinner. Woohoo! Here are a few photos from the museum:

the master at work


artwork fini


a peach, a pear, and a noodle