Fine Art at Sea World

We took a little trip to Sea World the other day; it was just us girls having some fun.  The main purpose of our outing was to get out of the heat!  It was 108 degrees at home. We could stay home and run the expensive air conditioner in the house, or we could "save energy" by filling up the gastank and driving to San Diego. As long as our comfort was going to cost us one way or another, we opted for fun. It was 76 degrees when we got to Sea World. What an amazing difference!

Since it was a homeschool day, it doubled as an educational field trip. Yup. 

Little did I realize just how great of an educational experience it would be! The kids are always learning things at Sea World; it really is a great place to educate in a fun way. 

We attended one show and it's one we haven't been to before. We usually like to see the Shamu show and the dolphin show, and then the kids are done with shows. This time we went to the sea lion and otter show, which was Halloween themed for the season.

The set was a haunted castle, and the animal actors put on quite a show! It was adorable and the kids were completely engaged in the antics of the sea lions and otters. I loved it too!

One thing that caught Gracie's eye was the painting on the set. She was pointing and pointing until I finally caught on to what she was talking about. With lots of excitement she was telling me that she's seen that painting before on a show on Tv called "Little Einsteins".  This show is a kid show on the Disney channel and they feature famous art and music, so no doubt this painting is a replica of something famous and here I am, clueless.

"Mom, what is that painting? Mom, who painted it? Mom! Mom! Mom! What is that painting called? Why are the lion and the unicorn having tea with that lady? Mom! Mom?"  Seriously, kid, watch the otter. She would not settle down until I promised that we would look it up online when we got home. Whew!

The next day...

I googled and googled trying to find information about this painting and couldn't find it. I'm obviously not much of an art googler. So, I sent an email to Sea World asking about it. So far, no response from them yet, but I'm hopeful that they'll reply.

In the meantime, and with some help from my facebook friends, I did find information about this painting. It is actually a tapestry in a series of six famous tapestries from the early 1500s. The lady is Mary Tudor, who was Queen of France in 1515 for a short period of time.  The lion represents her brother, Henry VIII and the unicorn is her husband (they are secretly married), Charles Brandon the Duke of Suffolk.  I believe Mary Tudor is the White Queen.

I was nearly brought down to the floor in a laughing fit when I read that the unicorn represented the husband. Phallic symbolism? And a lion for a brother, growling man eating big cat. That's hilarious!  I opted not to point this out to my six year old. The lady is married to a beautiful magical creature, and her brother is a lion; that is all.

We discussed how this piece of art is not a painting, but a tapestry. What is that?  It's made of cloth, sort of like a blanket that hangs on the wall. When I explained it, my little girl's eyes lit up and she made a connection to the new Disney movie, "Brave".  She's got it!

She also was excited to learn that the lady was the Queen of France. For some reason, she loves France and anything French. Her dream is to go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. She also enjoys French language lessons in school. Can you believe she's only six? What was I interested in when I was six? Dolls, red shoes, and picking dandelions.

This artwork has so many of her favorite things! Royalty, magical unicorn, France, a Disney connection too. How cool is this!

She goes to this fabulous school and is in a Montessori/Homeschool hybrid program. Her awesome teacher gave us a syllabus for the entire year before school started. Since we know what is expected of her, we know that she has an art history project due at the end of May. It's only October, but since she recognized this piece of art and it is part of a fun a Sea World show too, it's sticking in her brain. She wanted to know more about it and in doing that, she's got a good head start on her art project. I think we'll just go with it and do the art project early and keep it until May. Why not! For the project, she will not only have to explain the artwork, but make a replica of the piece. She drew it already and told me how she could make it out of fabric and glue. We're on a roll! May is always such a busy time of year, it'll be nice to get this project done and have it waiting in the wings.

Who knew an afternoon at Sea World would turn into such a great art history lesson!

*Update:  Seaworld responded to our email! There wasn't any pertinant information about the artwork that we didn't find already, but it was great to know that they researched Gracie's question and responded with an informative and thoughtful answer. This is the response:

Ms. Schumacher and Gracie,

      Thank you for your interest in Clyde & Seamore’s Spooky Adventure and Shamu at SeaWorld San Diego. The set of the Spooky Adventure show is a recreation of the original set from the show Spooky Kooky Castle that Clyde and Seamore performed in back in the 70’s and 80’s. The tapestry is a recreation of the one that appeared on that set and is called The Lady and the Unicorn. It’s a recreation of a French tapestry from the late 15^th century. As far as Shamu’s birthday, SeaWorld has never celebrated one official day as Shamu’s actual birthday. Thank you again for your interest in SeaWorld and we hope you plan to visit us again soon.

Ernie Scott  | Entertainment Creative & Performance Manager 500 SeaWorld Drive  |  San Diego  |  CA 92109 Direct: (619) 225-4281 |  Fax: (619) 226-3660

 


Thanks, Mr. Scott, we do plan to visit again soon. :)

An Interesting Camping Adventure

Fenna called it. She said "going camping is going to be interesting". But, she really wanted to go so Keith planned out a two night trip and we packed up and went. Keith and I both promised that yes indeed, it would be interesting. I believe we were true to our word on that.

We planned a two night tent camping adventure on Mount Palomar just two miles from the observatory. It is a nice beautiful pine tree covered mountain. Lovely!

 
We drove up there and the flies were so terrible that we were all frantically waving our arms around our heads after a minute. We walked around a bit and decided that we wouldn't be able to cook or enjoy ourselves with the fly population so hungry for us. They acted like we were the biggest and best turds who ever set foot on the mountain! After 10 minutes, we were done and headed back down the mountain to a campground closer to town near a lake.

We were going camping with our friends, the Block family and their dogs and when they called and said there were too many flies in the campground I thought, "oh he's exaggerating."  Unbelievable!

We ended up at Lake Skinner, a nice lake that you cannot touch. It is illegal to touch the water because the pollution from your human body might be harmful to the fish. The fish have the same view of us that the flies do.  This is the event site of the Temecula Balloon and Wine Festival, and the site of the new splash pad where I took the kids a few weeks ago. This might be good.

This campground is only 20 miles from town. It took us over 3 hours to get there after going up to Palomar Mountain, back down, stuck in traffic on the freeway, across town and out the other side. The kids were sick to death of being in their carseats. They sensed it was taking way too long to get to our campsite. These kids of mine are geniuses!

The original plan was that we would leave the house at 1pm, go set up camp and then I would bring the girls back to town for their swimming lesson class and head back up. Well.... that didn't happen. We left around 2:30 and arrived at our campsite at nearly 6pm. Swim lessons were pretty much over by then. They missed the first lesson of this new session, oh well.

Lake Skinner campground is nice enough, but they don't have tent spaces. The camping spots are designed for RVs and it's set up like a parking lot. There were other tent campers there too, but like us, they had to set up on a hard packed dirt pad.

We set up our campsite on the tiny pad that was our assigned camp spot and got to work with cooking dinner. Things were looking up! As long as there is food, there will be happiness, right? Right! I made Dollywood Potatoes over the propane burner.

Fenna was very worried about the size of the tent. She mentioned it a million times and we kept telling her that it was a 4-person tent but it would hold all of us and the dog fairly comfortably. She knew that if it was a 4-person tent, it was really a 2 or 3 person tent. She was pleasantly surprised when we popped it up!  We set up the little girls' tent too, just for fun (and elbow room since Fenna sleeps like a starfish).

The tent campers in the next parking, er, camping row were loud. We got to hear some very colorful language and dogs barking all evening and into the wee hours of the morning. At least they were happy people. Loud happy inebriated campers.

Our friends camped in their luxurious hotel on wheels.  They had a bathroom, running hot water, electricity, tv and internet. The probably slept great too.

I couldn't sleep. We finally laid down in our tent around midnight. We kept waiting for the campground to settle down and become somewhat quiet, but that wasn't happening so we caved and tried to sleep through the racket. Finally, around 2am, a little Spanish lady yelled "Would you please be quiet! Thank you!" There is something about the voice of a little Spanish lady that scares people. It worked too, the entire campground was dead silent after that.  Lady, I thank you.

Keith and Fenna slept great. Sandy slept with us in our tent but she was all over me, laying on my legs, then pushing up against me, stealing my blanket, and then she ended the night by sleeping on my pillow. She's going into the pink tent next time!

At one point, I forgot who was sleeping where and I thought Fenna was Keith, but she was in her own sleeping bag so I was very confused. I thought I stole all the blankets off of him so I patted her down thinking she was Keith, and I just wanted to know if he was cold laying there without any blankets. Then I was grabbing her wrist to see his watch to find out what time it was. She wasn't cold, had no watch on, and wasn't Keith. She let me know it too. Whoops.

I wasn't comfortable at all. I tried and tried to sleep and I was dead tired, but I just laid there on the hard ground with my eyes wide open. I slept on and off from 2ish until nearly 5am and then I was awake for the day. I think I got 3 hours of sleep with 23 wakings in there, it was ridiculous! Around 5:30, I decided to quit trying and I just got up.

Gracie woke up a little before 5am and she said, "I wish I had some tape so I could tape up those birds."  Keith was making gun noises while looking at the door of the tent. She is her father's daughter.


After heating up the tea kettle for some instant coffee.. I wandered the campground and my husband took some great photos while I snapped some sand-spotted pictures to start the day. We were going to need some decent photos to pretend the camping trip wasn't a complete failure.

It was great to wake up so early and see hot air balloons! (Can I say I woke up if I never really slept?) They were off in the distance but we were able to see them well enough, even through the morning fog. It was a lovely way to start the day! We saw three balloons in the sky. Very pretty.  Keith saw a chicken hawk too. He thinks that's why the birds were going crazy around 4am; the chicken hawk had breakfast.

The kids had a lot of fun playing in their pajamas on their scooters and on the playground. Then we went for a walk to the untouchable lake.  The water is used as a public water source, so fish and waterfowl can poop in it but we can't dip our toes in. Libby's feet stunk so bad she would have killed the fish anyway. Those polka-dot shoes are almost 2 years old and she loves them, but they smell horrid.

The walk to the lake was nice. The fog lifted and the sun came out and heated things up pretty quickly.  It was still fairly early so the splash pad was not operating yet, which was fine by me. The kids were disappointed though. I promised them we'd come back another day when it's working. I didn't bother to inform them that the water turns on at 10am. They don't need to know everything.

Now that it was nearly 10am, we'd come to a unanimous decision that we were done camping. We had lunch (hey, breakfast was 5 hours earlier), took down the tents, packed up the gear and drove the short distance home. We were home at 11:15am.  So much for our planned two nights of camping, we camped for 16 hours.

After such a short campout, there is still a ton of cleanup to do after arriving home! The van doors were open most of the time in the evening, and the smoke from the fire went into the van stinking up the whole works. I have to rug dr the interior now. Joy.  Camping in dirt makes everything dirty. I'm still cleaning from our little excursion.

The first thing we all did when we got home was to ask ourselves, "Am I more tired then dirty or more dirty than tired?"  We all decided we were filthy but more tired, so we slept. Everyone slept four or five hours. Apparently I wasn't the only one who didn't sleep well in our parking spot!

Now that this interesting camping adventure is over, I can honestly say that I have RV envy.

Boring Host Family - That's us!

We have done absolutely nothing fun since our "Dutch daughter" arrived. I promised her that we are fun, and all we've done is sit around the house twiddling our thumbs and updating our blogs.

She's been here for two weeks. The first week we went school shopping, registered for school and on the 11th, the girls started classes. We drove around town a bit to show her around, but mostly we stayed in and got to know one another better.

Fenna brought us lots of presents from Holland. Such fun! She brought magnets, pot holders, chocolates, candy, a beer bottle opener for Keith, toys for the babies, and pens with windmills on top for the girls. We are a big family and she had something for everyone, very generous!

Last weekend was probably a terribly boring weekend for our teenager who is anxious to explore and go places, but we stayed in all weekend. With my van needing new brakes, we were pretty limited. It was nice though (at least I thought so) because we just hung around home and visited. Keith took the van apart and fixed the brakes. They needed new rotors too, and in the back which is apparently more complicated and more worthy of garage-vocabulary (cussing).

Monday I had my ride back. We had a successful week of going to school and coming home again. On a normal day, I am going to make three school runs. Once to take Fenna to the high school at 7am, once to take Gracie to Kindergarten at 11am, and once to pick up Gracie and Fenna at 2:30.  The 2:30 run actually takes an entire hour.  On Mondays, I'll be making 4 school runs since the Kindergarten gets out early at 1:30.  On days when Fenna has evening colorguard practice, I'll make 5 runs to the school: the normal three plus take Fenna back to the school at 5:30 and pick her up at 8:30pm. Follow all that?  Ok, next week we're going to add in a Late-start day just for confusion.  I am once again the Mom-Taxi!  It's just too hot to make them walk.

As awful as it sounds, I don't mind too much yet. I knew what I was signing up for when I offered to be a host parent. The hour long afternoon pick up can also serve as nap time for Charlie and Libby if they would stop giggling at each other and fall asleep. One of these days they will. Charlie can face forward in his carseat now so I can rearrange the kid seating without having to flip carseats around, that should work well if I need to separate them in the vehicle.

I have three carseats in the van. The Evenflo Triumph can hold Libby or Charlie and can be flipped around backward if needed. The Graco Nautilus can hold Libby or Charlie or Gracie! It's the best seat in the house!  Then I have a little Graco booster seat that can only hold Gracie. It's just an elevated seat, so the seat belt must be used on that one. The other carseats have the 5 point harnesses, but Gracie uses the seat belt even if she sits in the Nautilus. I explained the seating rules to Fenna and she looked at me like I was speaking Greek; not that it matters because I don't expect her to strap in the kids, but I offered up the trivia.

This past week was focused only on school.  The girls and Keith went to school, I drove the taxi and the little ones tagged along and asked where everyone went.

On Tuesday we had Charlie's birthday party. I guess we have done one fun thing!  It really was a great party - best one yet!  We started the day by looking at pictures of Gracie and Libby's first birthdays - might as well knock out the jealous monster before it rears it's ugly head.  They both turned one and celebrated, had gifts, and now it's Charlie's turn. The child is one popular baby! We had the party at 3pm after toddlers nap and big kids come home from school.  We had 21 adults and 17 children here! Full house! It was so much fun.

The only other semi-exciting thing we did was have family over yesterday.  Relatives from South Dakota are vacationing nearby, so they stopped in for a short visit.  Fenna got to meet them too. She had just come home fresh from an 8 hour colorguard practice in the hot sun, so we didn't make her pose for a picture with her "new cousins", but it was nice that she got to meet them.

So, that's it.  That's all we've done so far. I'm feeling a burning desire to get out of the house and take these kids on an outing - so that's what we are doing today! Yay! We decided last night what our plan would be for the day. First and most important: sleep in, then we'll pack up a picnic and strap the kids in and go to the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park. I got season passes for myself, Fenna and Gracie. The total was $10 less than if I had paid for one-day tickets, plus the memberships are tax deductible.  It is still too hot to go to Queen Califia's Magic Sculpture Garden in Escondido, but we will go there another time (it is close to the Safari Park and makes for a fun little extra stop).  I am looking forward to our fun day ahead.  Happy Fun Sunday!