This weekend we are all up in New Hampshire skiing and it’s been great!

I landed last night in Boston, PSM picked me up, we headed to New Hampshire where GES, ACS, EJS and MGS were meeting us to spend the weekend. I haven’t seen them in two weeks since I went to NYC to visit dad last week, so seeing them was great!

MGS saw me when I got out of the car and she was fit to be tied, what a greeting, EJS was still waking up from the drive, not as enthusiastic! MGS asked if I could sleep with them last night, I loved that!

This morning, we all got up, some earlier than others, EJS…had breakfast and hung out. There is also another family here to ski, friends of PSM, with two kids one year younger than both the girls, so there is playing, running, screaming, let’s just say fun!

The other family needed to rent skis, so we headed to the mountain. EJS was excited to ski with me again and MGS couldn’t wait to get on a chair lift with Auntie J! I was tickled. We got to the top of one of the lifts and away we went. What a great skier both girls are! EJS is getting better with her form and parallels, but…she just wants to go fast, which I totally get and she wants to beat everyone to the bottom, you go girl!

MGS is so stinking cute! She really got into her own this year and has made great strides, she is also fearless! There were many times where the girls would ski ahead and we would catch up or someone would ski first, then the girls, then someone taking up the caboose.

One of the times I was with MGS it was great because…I believe I told you she is a wee tot, well, those kids are so cute when you see them on the slopes and as we were skiing under the lift, people were looking at her and smiling and saying things like “you go!” “woo hoo!” It was a lot of fun.

It really was a treat to ski with both of them, to see and feel their enthusiasm and they are such troopers “one more, one more, I’m going to beat you to the bottom, one more”. It was neat to be able to ski with my sister again after all these years. I don’t think we’ve skied together since college, so this was fun. I loved watching her, she has great form and is a very smooth skier.

We skied from about 10:30am to 3:15pm, with a short break for lunch in between, really great!

After skiing, back to the house to relax, snack, have dinner and then eventually pass out on the couch in front of the fire. That sounds pretty good to me, I wonder what’s in store tomorrow!

Happy Happy to my friend TS!

I love museums, practically raised in them.

I am inspired to write to you today because the family went to the Boston Museum of Science today, thanks PM for the suggestion.

Different museums have different meanings to different people and are seen in different ways, as you can imagine, just like everything, right? Going to a museum by yourself is enjoyable, if you are into museums, for the same reasons as going with others, but sometimes it’s just more fun to go with others, to enjoy, admire even, be inspired, learn from each other and what you see and maybe even laugh a little. The last one I do with my dad often when we go to the modern art sections of museums and scratch our heads and think…hmmm…really?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love modern art, there are some artists that some people don’t get, like a Rothko or Stella, even a Pollack but I really love them, their paintings may look like gibberish to some, but I am moved and see meaning when I look at them. What I’m talking about are the things that don’t make sense to us, like a black dot on a blue canvas or a pile of insulation on the floor, maybe they are about the struggle to stand out in a sea of people or how to stay focused when there is chaos all around, I don’t know!  But my dad and I wonder often and laugh often, but that’s alright. The point of art is to elicit a response and that’s just what it does and tell you the truth, it doesn’t matter what we think, it matters what the artist who created it thinks, right? Ok, moving on.

Going to museums with kids is another experience entirely, to see things through their eyes is a feeling like no other…the wonder, the fascination, the excitement, the boredom, the laughter, the enthusiasm, the interest. I’ve been to art museums with them, The Museum of Natural History in New York City, http://www.amnh.org/, and this was the second time I was with them at the Boston Museum of Science, http://www.mos.org/,  and they didn’t disappoint. It’s interesting the things you think they will find interesting and maybe they don’t and then there are things you never thought they would be interested in and bam! MGS and I had some fun laying on a bed of nails, didn’t hurt and she loved it, remembered it from the last time and wanted me to do it with her again, it was great!

I’ve loved experiences I have had at different museums, dad and I go to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, http://www.mfa.org/, when we are in Boston together, we have a similar technique of touring exhibits and different galleries, another one we have enjoyed together is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, http://www.metmuseum.org/. You could get lost in there, walking around for days, doesn’t that sound wonderful?

I remember an art class I took in high school, he went with me to the Met and The Guggenheim, http://www.guggenheim.org/, and the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, http://www.moma.org/, to research particular artists. Going with my dad was a different experience than with my mom, a memory I will treasure and I would love to share with you, but not tonight. But I will tell you that that is probably one of the greatest gifts they ever gave me, a love and appreciation for art and museums. Maybe one day I’ll give you my personal guided tour of my favorite museums.

Living in Atlanta, I joined the High Museum of Art, http://www.high.org/, they had some great exhibits that would come through, it was never enough pieces, but it was nice to be able to go whenever I wanted. The best part was that sometimes I would go with a friend or two, but sometimes…if there was a really special exhibit, a large group of us would go.

My two favorite museums in Paris, France, not Texas, just for clarification, are Musee D’Orsay, http://www.musee-orsay.fr/, which houses one of the biggest Impressionist collection and L’ouvre, http://www.louvre.fr/en, where “To see each of the 35,000 art objects in the L’ouvre, taking 60 seconds for each, would take roughly 25 days each of a full 24 hours.”

There is so much more I want to tell you, so many more museums to talk about and I promise that I will, go into greater detail about the museums that I have visited, the museums that I have loved and museums I have not loved, [and I almost got carried away and posted works by a slew of artists I love, but I will leave you with pieces by the artists I named earlier, Pollack, Rothko and Stella. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Pollack, Rothko, Stella