Snow is on the Horizon

 

Do you see what I see?  There, on Friday.  It's a snowflake.  I'm not ready for that snowflake.


Friday night started off as promised, with a date with Kevin on the balcony of the Great Hall of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On Friday and Saturday nights the balcony becomes the Balcony Bar, complete with live classical music.  We enjoyed a cocktail (especially Kevin who's had a really tough year work-wise and had an especially tough Friday) and wandered through the museum a bit before picking up the kids at their class.  It feels a lot different exploring the museum at night.  Mostly because there are no kids, it's much quieter and just feels a little more magical.  The light is different and the whole place is calmer.  I recommend visiting it on a Friday or Saturday night, if possible.

The kids and I recently read a story about the Kings of Nineveh and Assyria in our history book.  In the book there was a sketch of an Assyrian Cherub, large sculptures of winged animals with human heads that lined the entry of the palace at Nineveh.  The kids recognized the sketch and said that we'd seen them at The Met.  I didn't remember it until I walked past it on Friday night.  It was pretty darn cool to see the 2,600-year-old statues from our history book in person.

 
Earlier in the day the kids learned about the printing press in their history class (specifically Benjamin Franklin's that we visited in Philadelphia).  They got to make their own "press" using a piece of foam, some ink and a roller.  I really like Holden's print.

Saturday was a perfect fall day.  We met our friends in the park for soccer and a picnic in Central Park.  There were so many people with their cameras getting that perfect fall foliage holiday card picture.

 Don't let the pictures fool you - it may have been clear and sunny but it was in the mid-40s.

On the way home from Ella's soccer game on Sunday she and I stopped in the Natural History Museum to buy a birthday present.  Since we still had a couple hours until Holden's baseball game was over we decided to finally check out the Butterfly Conservatory.  I can't believe we haven't been in there in the two years (and countless visits to the museum) since we moved here.  It seems impossible that there are still rooms we haven't been in yet.

It's so nice to have memberships to museums and to be able to pop in for a quick 20 minutes and not feel like you need to stay and get your money's worth. 

Wish us luck this week with the cold and snow.  We have an outdoor field trip planned on Thursday.  Fingers crossed the snow holds off.