Day at the ABQ Museum & Tiguex Park

Bel & I took the kids to Tiguex Park (to kill some energy) and then made the courageous foray to the ABQ museum to see the Impressionism exhibit (Renoir, Monet, Manet, Carriere ...). While at the park the boy starting leaping off a wall and Juney followed suit ... with a twist. You see, at gymnastics they've been teaching her to jump with pretend cookies on her arms and to try and keep her arms up when she lands so that the cookies don't fall off. Juniper decided to try it with real cookies. She did pretty good. The cookies fell off only about 1/2 the time. Bruce decided to imitate and his cookies never fell off.


The cookies did get eaten eventually. A few were just thrown away after a wobbly landing.

As we approached the museum we did a gradual transition. They've some wonderful sculptures outside and this great water feature with a stream you can walk in. Or at least we walked in. Theoretically it should have been possible to wade without getting wet but both kids decided stomping and splashing was wonderful.


The kids were so soaked from the water feature that we played on a wall while they dried a little bit. It was a hot day so it didn't take long ... ahhh New Mexico.

Perhaps a quiet Impressionist exhibit wasn't the best idea. They did great in the rest of the museum; however, the security guard came over 3 times when we were in the multi-million dollar exhibit hall. Twice for Bruce and once for Bel. Apparently the security system is set to work within a foot of the wall. We were trying to explain to Bruce how the picture looks different from far away versus up close. We got too close ... but no touching. We had a talk before going in and Bruce was amazing about no touching or running or yelling. However, he did talk a lot. He really liked Renoir's La Parisienne (which may be spelled incorrectly). I really liked a piece by Eugene Carriere (who I'd never heard of before) called Maternity (and something) which showed an image of a mother and nursing child. At the fancy exhibit hall (ok ... Fancy Nancy Museum) there was a family room where they had things kids could touch. We spent a long time in there. It was fantastic. There was a boat with crayons and sketchpads for the kids to make their own materpieces.



This is the boat, but Bruce took this photo. Actually all the rest of the photos on this entry were taken by Bruce. He discovered photography ... really "got it" for the first time in that family exhibit room. He must have taken 50 pictures in there. I've selected a few to share.