Artist Study: Seurat

 Our first artist study of the year was on Georges Seurat.

 At our first tea time we watched this little slide show about Seurat and pointillism.

 We also read the Getting to Know... biography.

 Another book we used was Name That Style: All About Isms in Art.  There are brief descriptions and examples for all kinds of art styles included!

 We checked this book out from our library.  It is a little lengthy for one sitting, but it has some good information.

 James Mayhew's Katie books are lots of fun.  In this one she visits several pointillist paintings.

 We had this book in our collection from when Alice was smaller.

 We made color wheels one week and found that just like a pointillist painting, the colors blend better when you're further away.

 We also tried this melted crayon project I found on Pinterest.

 This was much more difficult than I thought it would be, but we had a good time anyway!

For our final Seurat tea time we had sprinkled pointillism cookies!

In October we will be learning about Dali.  We're also going to be starting an art class with some friends!

Drawn Together

 Tonight Jack and I went to Drawn Together, an event to benefit the school libraries that were destroyed or damaged in the May 20 tornado.  Four cartoonists came together (and paid their own way) to talk and sign books and posters and t-shirts with all the proceeds going to the libraries.

 Stephan Pastis

 Jeff Kinney

 Lincoln Peirce

 Dav Pilkey

 There was a short question and answer session and then the line started for the signing table.

 Jack got started on his new book while we waited.

We were in line for close to an hour and a half and all of the authors were still smiling and chatting with every kid who went through the line--after all of the book signings I've been to I've seen some who were not very personable or some who were just divas, but these guys were all very gracious to all of the kids, so I'm glad we waited.  If you want to help out, you can still get a cool Drawn Together t-shirt here!

The Gaylord Texan

 The rest of our vacation time was spent at our hotel.  We stayed at the Gaylord Texan, and usually we don't stay somewhere quite so nice, but since on our first family vacation we stayed on base at Offutt and on our second family vacation almost everything was paid for, splurging didn't seem so bad for the third one.

 Our room had a little balcony on the atrium, but it was tucked away in a corner so it still seemed private.

 The pergola on the left side of the picture above was over this little area in front of the pool.

 They have a separate water park area, but it was already closed for the season, so we swam inside.  Really, though, between the rain on Friday and the long day out on Saturday, we wouldn't have had much time there anyway.

 It was nice to be able to go to dinner without getting in the car!

 After dinner Saturday night we walked around the atrium a bit.

 Both kids fell asleep pretty quickly and since they stayed in my mom and dad's room, Jay and I went back to the restaurant and I had the best bread pudding.

 Before we checked out Sunday morning we walked around a bit more.

 There are a couple of different areas with little trains set up.

 We had a great time!

 On the way home we stopped at the WalMart in Atoka to get some snacks and show the kids what WalMarts used to look like.  Yeah, we're that exciting.

Much to Jack's delight, he found a TMNT figure he's been looking for for a long time.  We spent all that money on a trip and we could have taken them to WalMart and Incredible Pizza and they probably would have been just as happy!

Legos, Hamster Balls, and Mazes

 We spent much of the day Saturday at Grapevine Mills Mall.  We started off at Legoland.

 Both of the kids had been looking forward to this and really enjoyed it.

 After our balloon encounter a couple of weeks ago, both kids pointed this out to me.

 We also saw our hotel!

 The 4D movie was fun, too--we got sprayed with water!

 The most hysterical part may have been watching Alice drive this police car.  I don't think she's ever driven anything like this before and it showed.

 They had a little ride where you could pedal and make yourself go higher.

 Jack had checked out the website before the trip and saw that you could trade minifigures with workers who had them on their badges, so he was on the lookout for ones he wanted.  He ended up with two that he traded and one of them had a piece he didn't have yet (a chef's hat) so he was pleased.

 He had been saving for a while so he was able to buy two pretty big sets and three minifigures and have some left over, too.

 Alice spent some of her money at the Hello Kitty store--it was hard for her to narrow it down, but she ended up with a multi-colored pen and a notebook.

Both of the kids really loved these hamster balls.  Really I guess they were more like bubbles since you don't usually put your hamster balls in water, but that's what the kids call them.

 They zip you inside this big plastic thing and fill it up with air.

 Then you try to move around the pool.

 We had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.

 

 Our last stop was the Magic Maze's Emporium.

 We tried the mirror maze, which was the biggest mirror maze I've ever seen.

 We also tried the laser maze.  You have to try to press two buttons and get back to the door without hitting any lasers as quickly as you can.

Everyone outside can see you on a screen, but that didn't stop me from getting down and trying to belly crawl under a laser.  I'm not going to see any of these people again.

Next up:  The rest of the trip!