Time is marching on, the packers are coming and we really are leaving. We have loved our time here in Cleveland. For a place that I really didn't want to move to four years ago, I am having a very hard time leaving it. We came here with two children and are leaving with five. We've been so incredibly blessed to find lifelong friends during our stay. Although Marc was worked disgusting numbers of hours he has been happy in his work. It's crazy that residency, which is so demanding, has been so good to our family. To our friends and neighbors- thank you a thousand times for your love and support. We will miss you terribly. To my family- I am so grateful for this season of being close to you. Thank you for letting me lean on you during this joyous but difficult phase of life. To our award-winning library and especially our most kind and patient librarian: I am just planning on relocating the entire building to North Dakota. I'm not sure if I'm up to breaking in a new story-time person with my five boys and the libraries out there only allow ten items per card. Since we struggle not to max out our limit of fifty items here in Ohio, I will need you to come straighten them out up north. There are so many things about Cleveland that we will miss- the amazing food, the beautiful parks, the access to culture, normal amounts of retail, etc. Of course, there are some things we will not miss as well but I thought it would be fun to say goodbye to them all in the poetic style of "Goodnight Moon."
"Goodbye Cleveland"
Goodbye Cleveland Town
Goodbye Browns
Goodbye sirens and city sounds
Goodbye Clinic
And goodbye PICU rounds
Goodbye LeBron
(Wait! You're already gone!)
Goodbye Lake Erie
Goodbye weather dreary
Goodbye Costco
And goodbye Rock Hall
Goodbye Indians
And goodbye friends
Goodbye orange barrels
And goodbye ethnic grub
Goodbye traffic
Goodbye parking stubs
Goodbye Dave
And his cosmic subs
Goodbye museums
Goodbye zoo
Goodbye, Cleveland. We'll miss you.
P.S. Since we are moving, I can't very well continue a blog entitled "The Cleveland Chronicles" so I've registered a new domain. You can follow our continuing adventures at fivebelowblog.blogspot.com
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Sunday, June 9, 2013
The Art of Awesome
Oh, Cleveland. You never cease to amaze. We made time in our crazy June schedule to visit the new Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art and I am so glad we did. This place was incredible! For those of you in the Cleveland area who haven't gone yet, go! It's free! It's fabulous!
There is a whole children's room with hands on activities that familiarize kids with pieces of art. That way, when you tour the galleries as a family it becomes a treasure hunt. The kids recognize the pieces from the games they played and get excited about the familiarity. The boys were actually asking for more information about the pieces that they identified. It was just lovely. We were there for hours and I wish we would have scheduled more time. So, here comes a whole boatload of pictures just in case you aren't convinced of the awesomeness of Gallery One yet.
The first thing our boys were attracted to was the giant touchscreen. I'm not sure who came up with this idea, but it is super cool. The boys could draw a shape and then the program would search through the museum's catalog and find a piece of art with a similar shape or profile. The boys figured out that certain shapes were more likely to get them something manly like a suit of armor so it became a game to see who could get the most awesome looking artwork to appear on the screen.
All of the boys spent long amounts of time with the sculptural materials available. Here are Elijah and Benjamin with their metal mobile sculptures a la Alexander Calder.
The magnetic blocks were a big favorite for Gabe. He loves to build with blocks at home, but it was even more fun to build with blocks that didn't slide around or fall over.
David John was very serious about his string art..
All the boys made a project of putting together mosaics all over the carpeted area of the kids room.
This was another popular activity. More touchscreens had games involving works of art. Several pieces from the catalog would appear on screen as well as a key word such as "star". The boys then had to select all the works of art that had stars in them. Some of the matches were tricky. Sometimes you had to find a minute detail in a painting or identify a very stylized sculpture. As you can see, they were mesmerized and I confess to playing this game quite a few times myself.
This wall was made of magnetic color blocks and had magnets featuring pieces from the museum's collection. The idea was to play curator and organize the pieces into the "rooms" however you wanted. Some of our boys sorted by type i.e. furniture, statue, painting, etc. Others sorted by style or by the color of the magnet's border. I loved seeing their different ideas about what belonged together.
Outside of the children's area was an activity in which a statue appeared on screen and you had to try and match the body positioning of the statue. Marc was a master at this, and always got scores between 90 and 100 percent matching. I, on the other hand, stank. I was just really bad. I would get between 50 and 70 percent every time. Oh well. The boys were too small for the camera to register so Marc took them one at a time to try it out. Here are the results:
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This fabulous touchscreen wall allows you to browse through the museum's catalog by theme, by year, by geographical location, pretty much in any way you would like. You can also use an ipad or smart phone to download thematic tours of the museum. Just incredible.
Aside from the technology, the architecture of the museum is beautiful. The atrium was just lovely and gave the boys a little space to run without fear of bumping into something priceless.
*Sigh. Why is it that you can only truly appreciate something when your about to leave it? Anyway, we truly had a priceless experience and the Ricks boys give Gallery One a ten.
There is a whole children's room with hands on activities that familiarize kids with pieces of art. That way, when you tour the galleries as a family it becomes a treasure hunt. The kids recognize the pieces from the games they played and get excited about the familiarity. The boys were actually asking for more information about the pieces that they identified. It was just lovely. We were there for hours and I wish we would have scheduled more time. So, here comes a whole boatload of pictures just in case you aren't convinced of the awesomeness of Gallery One yet.
The first thing our boys were attracted to was the giant touchscreen. I'm not sure who came up with this idea, but it is super cool. The boys could draw a shape and then the program would search through the museum's catalog and find a piece of art with a similar shape or profile. The boys figured out that certain shapes were more likely to get them something manly like a suit of armor so it became a game to see who could get the most awesome looking artwork to appear on the screen.
All of the boys spent long amounts of time with the sculptural materials available. Here are Elijah and Benjamin with their metal mobile sculptures a la Alexander Calder.
The magnetic blocks were a big favorite for Gabe. He loves to build with blocks at home, but it was even more fun to build with blocks that didn't slide around or fall over.
David John was very serious about his string art..
All the boys made a project of putting together mosaics all over the carpeted area of the kids room.
This was another popular activity. More touchscreens had games involving works of art. Several pieces from the catalog would appear on screen as well as a key word such as "star". The boys then had to select all the works of art that had stars in them. Some of the matches were tricky. Sometimes you had to find a minute detail in a painting or identify a very stylized sculpture. As you can see, they were mesmerized and I confess to playing this game quite a few times myself.
This wall was made of magnetic color blocks and had magnets featuring pieces from the museum's collection. The idea was to play curator and organize the pieces into the "rooms" however you wanted. Some of our boys sorted by type i.e. furniture, statue, painting, etc. Others sorted by style or by the color of the magnet's border. I loved seeing their different ideas about what belonged together.
Outside of the children's area was an activity in which a statue appeared on screen and you had to try and match the body positioning of the statue. Marc was a master at this, and always got scores between 90 and 100 percent matching. I, on the other hand, stank. I was just really bad. I would get between 50 and 70 percent every time. Oh well. The boys were too small for the camera to register so Marc took them one at a time to try it out. Here are the results:
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.jpg)
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This fabulous touchscreen wall allows you to browse through the museum's catalog by theme, by year, by geographical location, pretty much in any way you would like. You can also use an ipad or smart phone to download thematic tours of the museum. Just incredible.
Aside from the technology, the architecture of the museum is beautiful. The atrium was just lovely and gave the boys a little space to run without fear of bumping into something priceless.
*Sigh. Why is it that you can only truly appreciate something when your about to leave it? Anyway, we truly had a priceless experience and the Ricks boys give Gallery One a ten.
Friday, June 7, 2013
The Big 30
There is a whole list of things that have happened in my life that I thought would never happen. I.E. I thought that I would never be the victim of a burglary, I never imagined that my husband would be arrested for kidnapping me, I certainly didn't picture myself getting married at 18 or ever living in Cleveland and there was a long period of time in which I really believed that I would never have children. More than all of these, however, I think I truly never expected to actually turn 30.
Somehow, it happened anyway. I'm not sure why, or how exactly. Being young has kind of always been my "thing". I had a June birthday so I was always one of the youngest in my class. I got married young, graduated college after 3 years and became a young teacher and I have been told repeatedly that I am far too young to have this many kids. Turning 30 means I will have to get an entirely new identity. If I am not the young student, the young wife, the young teacher or the young mother, then who am I?
It could have been a somewhat depressing day when I woke up to find that I was no longer a twenty-something. It could have been the kind of day which would force me to take in 30 stray cats in honor of my birthday and adopt a the persona of crazy cat lady. Every neighborhood needs one. It could have been that kind of day, but it wasn't. In fact, it was a great day.
I received kind gifts of chocolate, rainbow pens and post-it notes and beautiful sunflowers.
Marc babysat no less than nine little boys so that I could go have a delicious and girly birthday lunch with my friends. I am really going to miss these ladies.
We had awesome Vietnamese food at #1 Pho. So good!
To top it all off, Molly brought some amazing lemon cupcakes with raspberry cream icing.
Thank you to all of my friends for making my birthday so fun and reminding me that thirty-somethings can be just as cool as twenty-somethings maybe even more so. I love you guys!
Somehow, it happened anyway. I'm not sure why, or how exactly. Being young has kind of always been my "thing". I had a June birthday so I was always one of the youngest in my class. I got married young, graduated college after 3 years and became a young teacher and I have been told repeatedly that I am far too young to have this many kids. Turning 30 means I will have to get an entirely new identity. If I am not the young student, the young wife, the young teacher or the young mother, then who am I?
It could have been a somewhat depressing day when I woke up to find that I was no longer a twenty-something. It could have been the kind of day which would force me to take in 30 stray cats in honor of my birthday and adopt a the persona of crazy cat lady. Every neighborhood needs one. It could have been that kind of day, but it wasn't. In fact, it was a great day.
I received kind gifts of chocolate, rainbow pens and post-it notes and beautiful sunflowers.
Marc babysat no less than nine little boys so that I could go have a delicious and girly birthday lunch with my friends. I am really going to miss these ladies.
We had awesome Vietnamese food at #1 Pho. So good!
To top it all off, Molly brought some amazing lemon cupcakes with raspberry cream icing.
Thank you to all of my friends for making my birthday so fun and reminding me that thirty-somethings can be just as cool as twenty-somethings maybe even more so. I love you guys!
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