green + brown and m is for museums

This week's color photos were taken back in August, during our visit to the Getty Villa. I love exposing my kids to different cultural exhibits and events, music, art, dance, nature. They learn so much, without even realizing that they're learning, and I never know exactly what it is that they'll pick up from any given excursion. I just know it will be something, and hopefully it will make them fuller, rounder human beings.

Some of my favorite memories from my childhood are of my parents taking me and my sister to the art museum in New York, when it was too cold and snowy outside to do anything else, and we were most likely all going batty in the house. I was probably only three or four, but I specifically remember taking off my shoes, and walking inside a certain exhibit that was a glass, mirrored house... I have no idea what museum it was, or how often we went, but I remember the white socks on the glass and how special I felt. Later, when we moved to California, there was the Exploratorium, Steinhart Aquarium, my mom and I spending the day at the Oakland Museum, eating lunch in the courtyard and shooting baskets with wadded up napkins and the garbage can (for a prize of orange Popsicles).

Interactive, hands-on museums are the absolute best. There's no need to shush anyone, prevent them from walking past a certain velvet rope, or remind them to keep their hands to themselves. We'll be back in the Bay Area over Thanksgiving weekend, and I can't wait to visit those museums again. This time the tables will be turned, me as the parent, with kiddos in tow. I bet I'll still have a ball.

September 2014