While my mom was here following the Weekend of Awesomeness, Greg and I left her in charge of David and Mary so we could celebrate our 10th Anniversary. Yes, our anniversary is in April not June, and, yes, our 10th anniversary was in 2012 not 2013. But you do what you can do.
Last year, for our 10th anniversary, we had big plans to spend the day in Chicago visiting the Art Institute. I had been to Chicago a dozen or more times ... and still hadn't made it to the Art Institute. Grrrr! It seemed ridiculous. Our 10th anniversary seemed like a great time.
And then all of our kids got sick.
When our 11th anniversary rolled around we were so busy (and stressed) I forgot I even had a blog. We did nothing for our anniversary. But Greg brought me a whole pie! So we did acknowledge it.
I really liked my pie and all, but I still wanted my visit to the Art Institute before we moved farther away from Chicago.
Enter Grandma Evie.
So we finally got our day in Chicago without the kids. Sara doesn't count. In fact, she was a very happy part of our trip.
I loved the Art Institute. It was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Being there with Greg brought back a flood of memories. We used to do things like this! A lot! And I remembered why we did things like that a lot--because we really really like it.
And it was such a pleasure to have Sara with us.
She is such a content baby.
Her latest trick was blowing raspberries. As we walked the galleries, she blew raspberries to her heart's content.
It's good to know that her spit is on a fair number of famous artworks.
We hit many of the highlights. What was interesting is that Greg and I noticed things in famous paintings that we'd never seen before. Paintings like the one above or below are reproduced a million gazillion times. Yet seeing the real thing was different--we noticed details we'd missed before. (Like the monkey. How had neither of us ever noticed the monkey? Or in American Gothic, I never noticed the plant. Or, more importantly, I never noticed that the woman is much younger than the man. More father-daughter than husband-wife.)
Still love Rothko.
But the highlight was when, in the American folk art, we found Sara's hair twin! Check it out.
It was a wonderful visit. Art museums make me really happy. I forget how happy they make me and then I visit one again and I leave happy and I can't even explain exactly why. Something about good art speaking to the soul, I'm sure.
But I will say this. At one point a lady stopped us to coo at Sara and she said, "She is more beautiful than anything in this entire museum." I agree.
