Happy Anniversary to Us!

Yesterday, we celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary. Because we are trying to be frugal, we thought a great way to celebrate would be to visit the Getty Museum, which just happened to be having a very special Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. We had this planned about 6 weeks ago and finally, the big day arrived.

It'd been about 4 years since our last attempt at visiting an art museum. The girls definitely weren't ready then and it was frustrating, because Daddy Dude and I really like to walk around museums. For the past few weeks, I'd been preparing the girls for this visit, explaining how special the things we'd see were and what the rules were - no running, no screaming, no touching.

After a long drive, we finally arrived! The girls seemed to enjoy the tram ride, which was a pretty efficient operation.

Here is a balcony view from the outside of the museum. We went to explore the da Vinci exhibit first, since that was the main reason for coming. Unfortunately, photography wasn't allowed in any of the rooms (I was gently reprimanded by the guard, but he was very nice about it -very professional). The da Vinci exhibit also included works by several of his friends and associates. We explained to the girls that everything was at least 500 years old and created by an artistic geniuses. The girls seemed impressed and interested. However, in one of the rooms, one guard did not like the fact that Mika was looking at the paintings TOO CLOSE (I had explained that with oils, the resulting texture really enhanced a painting) and so, she and I got yelled at for that (I suppose she could have been worried about Mika sneezing on the painting, I don't know). THEN, when Marika started to get tired and raised one arm up to stretch, the same guard rushed over to Daddy Dude and told him that the museum recommended small children be placed in a stroller and where he could get one. I was totally flabberghasted by (1) the suggestion (she was just slowly raising an arm, I didn't think she was in any danger of knocking down an art piece) and (2) her demeanor was really quite offensive (was I really going to allow my kids to ruin a multi-million dollar piece of art?!). I thought my girls had been behaving pretty well - so what is this guard like when a more active child comes in??? Not a single other guard treated us in this manner. She was like a chicken jumping on a june bug. This was the only downer during our entire excursion.

Our second priority was to visit the French Impressionism wing. It's probably my favorite art period. =) In this wing, I was trying to explain how valuable a single painting was to Mika. I don't think she grasps that concept yet.

Here's the gang just outside one of the buildings... (by the way, it was really windy and cold that day!)

And just outside the Family Room, there was a beautiful spot for photography...

The Family Room was a special little building for kids to explore and play. They made a mask and then went to have some fun. We had to wait at least 15-20 minutes to get in.

There were a couple of art prints that I really liked here... (especially the one on the right!)...

And I *know* you were just dying to see the girls' masks up close...

We stopped at the Sculpture Terrace, just before we headed off to see the gardens...

What you see here is some heavily trained bougainvillea (one of my favorite shrubs). Gorgeous, aren't they?

And here are some shots from the garden itself... we really liked those red poppies with the black spots (I called them ladybug poppies - I wonder what they are really called! I want some!).

And last but not least, while the girls zonked out in the backseat, Daddy Dude drove me around town. First we drove around UCLA, then we passed by Beverly Hills, saw some people selling "star maps" (which totally cracked me up - but I couldn't get a very good picture of their signs) and finally... cruising on Sunset Boulevard. I asked Daddy Dude to please drive here, because for years, I've had a "Sunset Blvd" scrapbooking title sticker - and NOW I can finally use it! They had some awesome billboards on the strip, especially one advertising Season 3 for one of my favorite shows, True Blood (Season 2 is available on DVD in 2 days!!!).

All in all, it was a good day. The girls only lasted about one hour, because they started to get tired. Lunch and a visit to the Family Room perked them up a little bit, so we left the museum after 3.5 hours - not too bad for a 5 and 7 year old! Maybe in a couple of years, we'll venture out to the Getty Villa...