A Visit from Mom and Dad (aka "Honey and Papa")

Everyday when I come home, Julia is so excited to see me - she pumps her arms and kicks her legs and squeals a little bit. It's a good feeling. Another good feeling is going to pick up my parents at the airport for a weekend visit. Upon finally spotting my dad through all the people, I waved a reserved but happy "Hello!" from a distance - but on the inside, make no mistake, I was pumping my arms and kicking my legs and squealing a little bit. It is good to see my folks.

"Hey everybody! It's Papa!"

The main purpose of the trip, of course is undefined and general quality time. And we had lots of that. But we did some specific things, too. We were at the Nelson-Atkins almost all day Saturday, which turned out to be Slow Art Day (who knew!?). I think we complied with the name of the day - if not the official rules of the event - by taking our sweet time traipsing through the place. The Original Rules of Basketball was our first destination, though an installation in progress, some Dutch paintings, and this English owl stopped us on our way.

Owl Jug, England, 1670-1710, lead-glazed slipware; I stopped to look at it on behalf of Ju

lia Minerva

Dad and James Naismith

We arrived at - and enjoyed - the Rules exhibit, then dined at the Rozelle Court. By this part of

our day, Sergio had rejoined us, having excused himself for the morning to participate in Record Store Day (so much to experience on April 16!). He told us all about his lucky finds. After lunch we slowly made our way to the simple but stunning Monet exhibit (together again for the first time in 30 years!) - a must see. Truly.

in the Bloch building, capturing the moment, just before entering the Monet exhibit, where no photography was allowed

April 15 was a notable day as well. Dad remembered that it was Tax Day of 1979 when he and mom, who was pregnant with me, moved into the house I was to grow up in. Then, fast forward 32 years and it's Tax Day 2011 and Mom, Dad, Julia and I are in the lobby of the Plaza library listening to Julia intentionally say "Mama" for the first time. A milestone! Granted, she doesn't know who "mama" is or that "mama" is even a person. But still - she mimicked my mom saying it and it was clearly a milestone moment - just one key step beyond the "muhmuhmuhmuh" that'd she mustered up on occasion before.

Julia saying "mama"

Nothing to celebrate or observe on April 17 (that we knew of) - it was just a leisurely Sunday and a comfortable lunch and quality time and nice weather and chatting and holding Julia - every moment worth savoring before having to send Mom/"Honey" and Dad/"Papa" off again to catch their plane. I can't wait to see them again.

"Hooray for Honey and Papa!"

Beto and Lindsey's Visit (a photo essay)

...and 100% cute at the Eat Local and Organic Expo in Shawnee

The last night of Sergio's beer project - we celebrated by welcoming his cousin and his wife - Beto and Lindsey - who came to KC for yet another wonderful visit.

We managed to eek into a tour at the Boulevard Brewery at the last minute - it was such a fun treat.

Beto and Lindsey are photographers and these are just some of the amazing pictures they took.

This one in particular is a personal favorite of mine.

A Study in Orange, 2011

London Surprise

Wow. We did such a good job of keeping it a secret that I nearly forgot to mention it here. We went to London!

Fish and Chips and - most importantly - Mushy Peas

So now that the cat's out of the bag, I can tell you: our friends Ken and Lindsay are living there this semester and Ken was having a milestone birthday. Lindsay thought it would be a fun idea for Sergio and me to surprise him with a visit. We agreed completely, snatched up some plane tickets, kept it a secret for many weeks, and finally - despite three (!) flight cancellations due to the blizzard in the northeast - landed in London.

Lindsay, Ken, Sergio, me, and Big Ben

After pulling off our transatlantic surprise, we went on to have a fantastic time with Ken and Lindsay - 1 very historic pub crawl (led by an American expat with a PhD in Dickens), 2 thousand-year old churches (Westminster Abbey and Temple Church) several highly memorable encounters with cheese, delicious Indian food, a comedy show, a hilarious Beefeater tour of the Tower of London (also a comedy show), a visit to Abbey Road (Sergio's request - in homage to Pink Floyd, not those other guys) ...

"Raclette" at Borough Market - cheese, recently melted under these little broilers, and scraped off onto boiled new potatoes, served with gherkins and onions. Unbelievably good.

Borough Market on Valentine's Day

Our Beefeater - so hilariously sarcastic. The name purportedly comes from the fact that long ago, because they were the queen's guards, these "Yeomen Warders" would have had rare access to beef. I think they keep up the name because it's funny.

Did you know that London was founded by Romans and originally called Londinium!? Me neither? Not until our pub crawl with the expat. Lindsay, a historian, further elaborated on some of London's history and I found myself completely aghast - I figured everything was around 1,000 years old, you know, just since 1066, right? But the whole city itself is more like 2,000 years old. I come from a town that's only 150 years old, so needless to say, I found these facts to be phenomenal.

Statue believed to be of the Roman Emperor Trajan, AD 98-117 - 'Imperator Caesar Nerva Trajanus Augustus'

As if London's own antiquity we're enough, we went to the British Museum to see even more really, really old things. Like the Rosetta Stone! Which is nearly impossible to get to through the throngs of people clamoring for a glimpse. We also saw the Elgin Marbles which amount to a lot of marbles, and I think I can understand why Greece is so upset.

behind the Rosetta Stone with swarms of people in front

Elgin Marbles, South Metope XXXI

AND, what's more? Besides five days of quality time under the "gray cloud" and "white cloud" of London with Ken and Lindsay, we also got to meet up with another set of friends who happened to be in England at the same time as us. What a treat!

me and Lauren after an afternoon at the Courtauld Gallery

Cheers!

Family Vacation in Washington, DC

This summer's Big Vacation No. 1 was with my family, 12 of us total, in the nation's capital. We stayed in Foggy Bottom in a beautiful four bedroom condo that overlooked the Potomac and was full to the brim of books. We enjoyed a special tour of the Library of Congress and of the Capital; we saw the White House from afar and the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights up close. We experienced monuments and memorials, shopped at Trader Joe's and the farmers market, ate delicious food, saw interesting exhibits, watched Night at the Museum at the museum, walked an average of 8,000 steps a day, almost mastered the fare card system at the metro stations, and had a very good time indeed. It pained me to leave at the end of the trip (Sergio and I left a day before the other 10), but we were off to Big Vacation No. 2.

All the pictures are on Flickr; below are just a few...

in the corridor of the big beautiful condo

FAMILY at the LOC

from the Library of Congress to the Capital

a view of the Washington monument

The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States

the gang at the Hirschhorn

First First Friday: A Photo Essay

Christy, Armando, and Nina - heading out for their first First Friday in KC


First Friday first stop: Fresher Than Fresh Snowcones - Hi, 'Lil Snowie!



Next stop: "In Stereo" - the show of our friends Rachel Kort and Ellie Kort, who are twins



At Ellie and Rachel's show we met up with friends Chris, Mirna, and Alex






Mirna led us to the exhibit of Betsy Timmer whose tender and moving artwork is currently exhibited in a show with artist Tom Witzofsky called “I'll Show You Mine …” at The Base Gallery which is inside the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center



Jerry Bleem's artwork is also on display at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, including this quilt, made entirely of plastic bags, and titled "Remind me again why we're depleting the earth's resources and burying them in landfills"



Another Jerry Bleem piece made of stamps arranged in four different canvases that spell out "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" which means "Thus passes the glory of the world"



Nina having a good time



We ended the evening with Thai food at our favorite place - Lulu's

Sightseeing in Sarasota

palm trees

We had all day on Valentine's Day to see the sights in Sarasota, after Chris and Mirna's wedding on Friday. At the Mote Aquarium we saw exotic fish - fish that didn't quite look like fish - fish with both eyes on one side of their body or with strange, ugly spines or with fins like manes. We hung out with sea turtles, watched the dolphins paint valentines, and peeked tentatively at the lengthly tentacles of the dead giant squid on display. When we left there we headed back over to St. Armand's Circle which was packed with people. Traffic moved slow and parking wasn't promising until by some Valentine's Day miracle we managed to squeeze our rented, plump Chevy Caliber into a spot only a block off the circle. The circle is where the Ferrari, Porsche, et. al. show was and so we spent the next little while looking at exotic cars - cars that didn't quite look like cars - cars with doors that open up instead of out, cars with engines in the back instead of the front, cars with unaccommodating shapes and unusual colors.

the sea turtles didn't seem feisty at all

features not available on our rental car

We left St. Armand's Circle and headed back over the water (so much water! so many palm trees! what a place, this strange "Florida") to get back to downtown where we grabbed a plenteous pasta lunch, with doppios for dessert, to tide us over until Valentine's Day dinner at Marina Jack where the food was good, all the women wore red, and the server was above average.

But before that delicious dinner, we did make it to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (Ringling as in Ringling Bros. and as in Ringling College of Art and Design) where we had just enough time to see the miniature circus - stunning in scope for how it effectively conveys with such small figurines just how vast an endeavor the circus was in its hey day - the larger circus exhibit, with actual fixtures, trailers, and signs - and the Ca' de Zan - the "House of John" (Ringling) which is an exquisite and unique Venetian mansion which has been sitting on the waterfront, replete with gorgeousness inside and out, since 1926.

miniature circus figurine

giant sign from the non-miniature circus exhibit

a statue at Ca' d' Zan, eccentrically aged

a banyan tree and me

at the back of the Ca' d' Zan

We had a pristine day of sightseeing together - a good way to spend the 14th day of February, which also happens to be Valentine's Day.

an exotic tree at the Ringling museum