Talent, Talent, Talent

I'm busy packing.  We're off on another adventure today.  Heading out of town.  Out of state, actually.  But you'll have to wait until Tuesday to hear the juicy details.

Meanwhile, this week was very entertaining.

I had a doctor's appointment across the park on the Upper East Side this week and on my walk home I decided to make a pit stop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art to see an exhibit that I've been hearing a lot about, the Charles James exhibit.  Charles James was a famous fashion designer in the 40s and 50s and a few weeks ago The Met had a big fundraiser to kick off this exhibit, The Met Gala, filled with all kinds of celebrities (you may remember the infamous elevator video of Beyonce's sister beating up Jay-Z after the party?).  Anyway, I wanted to see what would drive a B-list celebrity to such rage.

 

Photography was prohibited so this is the only shot I was able to surreptitiously snap.  The gowns we stunning and actually looked incredibly modern given that they were 70 years old.  I wish I had been able to get more pictures to show you but you can see more at this link.  I purposely went during the day without the kids, thinking they would have no interest in a fashion exhibit.  But I quickly regretted it because these were really pieces of art.  They had video cameras on extendable arms pointed at the dresses to display the details of the stitching up on a big screen.  Some of the dresses were lit from underneath to show details of lacework.  I would have liked to show the kids that even clothing can be art.  Perhaps this summer.

Then Tuesday night was the big Talent Show that Ella's been rehearsing for for weeks.  She played very well, especially considering it was the largest audience she's ever played in front of (a packed school auditorium).  We were so incredibly proud of her for not only playing piano in front of such a large crowd but also singing and singing in Spanish, no less.  She said she wasn't even nervous.  That makes no sense to me considering she's too shy to even order her own food in a restaurant.

 

And yesterday was Holden's final Publishing Party in class where the parents are invited to come in and read what the kids have been writing.  Holden "published" two books: one on a big decision he had to make (his was deciding how he was going to celebrate his birthday next month) and the Spanish book was about his plans for the summer.  He got to read it aloud to the room filled with students and parents.

Now off on our big adventure!  School isn't actually over until next Thursday for us but we're pulling the kids out for Friday and Monday.  This will be much more educational for them than watching their teachers pack up their classrooms.

Have a great weekend!

From Shakespeare to the Sea

You must think we've fallen off the face of the Earth.  No midweek post last week and now I'm late for my Monday morning post. 

Honestly, last week was pretty dull - nothing to write home about.  Ella's class took a mini field trip down to the corner of their block with a volunteer from an organization called Landmark West.  The kids were supposed to take in the local flavor - buildings, sounds, environment - and be inspired to write poetry about it. 

It was a drizzly day, we were standing under scaffolding, we couldn't hear the leader over the sounds of sirens and horns.  I don't see how anyone would feel inspired to write poetry under those circumstances.  It was truly an urban field trip.

I was also able to help in Holden's class last week with making Father's Day gifts.

And the kids had their last Scratch class - the computer class where they learned how to create and program their own video games.  The parents got to come on the last class and try out each student's game.  My kids just fell in love with Scratch and will continue doing it on their own over the summer online.

But our weekend...oh boy, was it a good one!

Saturday morning I met my friend Alina and some other moms in Brooklyn to participate in the Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America march.  Their name says it all.  I walked with a couple thousand moms across the Brooklyn Bridge and then participated in a rally to bring attention to the problem of guns in America. 

It was a beautiful day to walk across the bridge and the rally at the end was very emotional.  They had speakers such as the daughter of the principal who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the mother of the African American boy in Florida who was shot and killed just for playing his music too loud (his white killer was acquitted), a man who was shot in Brooklyn and was saved by another man who had previously been shot and who has since been killed by a gun.  Heartbreaking stories of loss.  It was enough to drive us to find an Irish pub and a pint of beer after.

Meanwhile, the kids were a little more upbeat in Central Park and discovered a woman making giant bubbles.  Apparently, it kept their attention for quite a while.

That night Kevin and I saw what is by far the very best stage performance I have ever seen.  We saw Macbeth at the Park Avenue Armory.  Absolutely incredible.

First it helps to know a little about the space.  The Armory was built in the Upper East Side by New York State's Seventh Regiment of the National Guard, the first volunteer militia to respond to President Lincoln's call for troops in 1861.  It's an enormous space with soaring ceilings and rooms to the side which are considered some of the best preserved 19th century rooms in the country.  It is now used for as a cultural space for unusual or interactive art that cannot be shown in traditional museums. 

When we arrived we were told which Scottish clan we belonged to and were sent to that room to join our clan.

 

Once our clan was assembled we were taken to the performance hall.  We entered a dark, silent room the size of football field.  No photos were allowed inside so I pulled some off the internet to show you (you might want to click on them to enlarge them).

 

We walked down the path (seen above) through the mud and past people wearing dark robes toward a Stonehenge-looking sculpture.  The setting was 1000 A.D. in Scotland.  The audience was seated in rows on either side of a long narrow stage in the middle (although it wasn't really a stage, more of a play space).  The play was so intense and immersed the audience so much (at one point it rains during a horrific battle scene) that there was no clapping at all during the performance - we were all so drawn into the play that we forgot we were spectators. 

It helped also that the actors were some of the best in the world (Kenneth Branagh who has been in dozens of Shakespeare plays and movies, played Macbeth) and Alex Kingston played Lady Macbeth (you might recognize her from ER). 

 It was so incredible that I am still thinking about it days later.  I wish I could see it again.

And of course Sunday was Father's Day.  Now I know that Coney Island wouldn't have been Kevin's first choice if he had been really honest about how he wanted to spend Father's Day.  But I guess choosing an amusement park over a museum and then a bar to watch the World Cup is what makes him such a great father. 

 

We took the hour and a half subway ride all the way out the end of Brooklyn where Coney Island (not actually an island, by the way) is found.  It is the East Coast version of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk but with far less attractive people.  I know, that's not very kind of me to say, but it's the truth.  There were some doozies. 

 

Holden rode his first roller coaster (above) and loved it.  The kids played carnival games, ate junk food and ice cream and even took a dip in the ocean. 

 

And all the fun helped take my mind off the fact that I was missing my dad a lot.  My first Father's Day without a father hit me in the gut at times throughout the day, especially once we were settled back at home, barbequing in the backyard and listening to the Giants baseball game. 

 

Happy Father's Day to my dad - one of the smartest, funniest, most generous people I've had the pleasure to love.

Eleven Years and Counting

Saturday marked the eleventh anniversary of our beautiful wedding.

We had a quiet day leading up to a fun night out.  Holden was invited to a birthday party and although it was a very difficult decision for him whether or not to miss soccer in order to go to the party, in the end the party won.  And it was such a refreshing birthday party.  He was dropped off at Nathaniel's apartment.  There were two other boys from their class there.  The four of them apparently played in Nathaniel's room with his toys for an hour or so, then they walked down the block for some pizza.  They hit the ice cream truck on the way out for some popsicles and then spent another hour or so playing in the courtyard next to the apartment building.  They finished up by watching a video in his living room.  No hired entertainers.  No expensive birthday cupcakes.  No wasteful goodie bags filled with crap to take home.  And Holden said "it was so awesome!"  I think I really like this Nathaniel's mom.

Meanwhile, Kevin and Ella took a bike ride through Riverside Park (no photos because the family documentarian wasn't present) while I enjoyed a nice table in the sun at a local cafe and caught up on some reading.  We were all in our happy place.

The babysitter arrived soon after Holden got home and Kevin and I walked down a few blocks to the newly remodeled Tavern on the Green.

The restaurant was originally a sheep corral with Sheep Meadow (the large grassy area where we spent the day a couple weekends ago) just across the way.  In 1934 it was turned into a restaurant and in 2007 it was the largest grossing restaurant in the United States.  It just reopened in April after several years undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation.  We sat outside on a gorgeous evening, overlooking Central Park, and had a delicious meal. 

And then because we live in New York City, we saw a Broadway play.  I have to admit, I wasn't blown away by the show, The Realistic Joneses, but it had some big name stars in it so it was fun to see them (Toni Collette, Marisa Tomei, Michael C. Hall).  It wasn't terrible but the story was odd and I've realized that when you see actors who are used to doing film or TV, they often aren't very good on stage doing the same show over and over and over.  They come across as bored and wanting to get it over with.  I found that with Jane Lynch when we saw her in Annie as well.  But we still had a great time and stopped for a drink on the way home at a hip rooftop bar above the Hudson Hotel.

Sunday was still sunny and beautiful so we spent as much time outdoors as possible.  I guess as a late anniversary present Kevin let me sleep in while he and Ella jogged around the reservoir in Central Park (Again, no photos.  Kevin hasn't learned that if I can't blog about it, it didn't happen).  With no plans we started the day slow in our back yard, Kevin and I reading while the kids worked on a science experiment.

 

I have the kids signed up for two new box-a-month subscriptions.  Remember our old Kiwi Crate and Little Passports, the art and geography boxes they used to get?  We loved those but they expired and we decided to try something new - both science related.  This volcano building experiment is from The Magic Schoolbus Young Scientists Club.  It was their first box and they had a lot of fun with it.  I found a coupon online to subscribe for a year at half price, so in case you're thinking of signing up, hunt for a coupon.  It also comes with a monthly email with links to educational sites related to the science topic of the month.  The second subscription is for Einstein in a Box (which unfortunately just changed their name to Groovy Lab in a Box).  Their experiments are all STEM related (science, technology, engineering and math).  Those boxes are filled with several activities and a lot of online resources and videos.  It may actually be a little too much because they haven't even finished the first box yet and we've already received the second.  Maybe they'll have more time in the summer.  Oh who am I kidding?  Our summer is planned to the gills.


When we all started to get restless the kids grabbed their scooters and we went in search of lunch, ice cream and the smallest park in Manhattan.

 

We learned about Septuagesimo Uno as it's called, from a movie we recently watched set in Manhattan.  It's 0.04 acres big small and sits in between two brownstones in the Upper West Side.  It's basically a cleaned up alleyway, maintained by the New York Department of Parks and Rec.  As you can imagine, it didn't hold our attention for long but it was fun to check it off our list.  We took the scenic route home through Riverside Park with a quick stop to climb a tree (the kids) and read (the grown-ups).

 

We ended the weekend with another yummy vegetarian BBQ - this time delicious BBQ portobello burgers topped with a BBQ slaw and smoked Gouda.

And as though on cue, we woke up Monday morning to a downpour of rain.  Mother Nature sure knows how to time her bad weather.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Today is Chancellor's Day.  In other words, the teachers need a day to do their end-of-year paperwork and pack up their classrooms so students are left at home (or wherever you can pack them off to).

A couple days ago I started plotting how the three of us would spend our midweek day off.  The beginning of the week was in the 80s with clear, sunny skies, so I envisioned us spending the day in the park, going on a nature hunt.  Yesterday, I realized that the forecast for today was rain and a lot of it.  My visions of wearing shorts and hunting for wildlife quickly turned to the three of us spending the day in our tiny apartment with our faces deep in laptops.  I couldn't let that happen.

Holden's been begging to take another Lego robotics class at Robofun (where they take their video game making class).  Lego robotics is where they build robots (or spaceships, or solar systems, or whatever) out of Legos and then use the computer to program them to move.  They had an all day camp today and I realized it would be a great opportunity to both make him happy and also for Ella and I to have a mother-daughter day.  Ella's always craving individual attention.

Mission accomplished.  He had a fabulous time.  Here's some video of his "planetary system" doing its thing.

With the rain coming down heavily, Ella and I ducked in for shelter at our favorite coffee shop, Birch.

And then we caught the matinee of Maleficent.  If you're thinking of taking your little ones, be warned - it's scary.  Very scary.  Ella isn't easily frightened but I'm sure glad Holden didn't come with us.

 

Check out these fancy seats in the movie theater.  They recline all the way back.

 

We still had some time to kill after the movie so I left Ella to her own devices in the kitchen.

For the first time I handed her a recipe and pointed out where the ingredients could be found and left.  It's only a one butt kitchen anyway, so I couldn't have helped her if I tried.  But I completely left her alone and she came up with these muffins all by herself:

Last night was Ella's big end-of-the-year chorus concert.  They sang all Beatles songs this time and it was fantastic.

Remember back when I was bragging about how school doesn't start until after Labor Day in New York?  Well, it's payback time.  Still three more weeks of school when it seems like everyone else in the country is celebrating their last days.