After all the excitement of last week, having a full second week of holiday vacation has felt downright luxurious at times. Jose and I went to MFAH on Monday to see both the Impressionist and Norman Rockwell exhibits. I enjoyed both! No photos were allowed in the Impressionist exhibit, but were ok for Rockwell.
The charcoal drawing above was one of my favorites, drawn in 1943. It was interesting to learn more about Rockwell’s illustration process, which often involved making large charcoal drawings like this one to nail down composition, tones, and details.
After the museum, we also had a nice lunch at Backstreet Cafe. We’d been wanting to go there again for a while, and finally got the chance. Yum.
The girls stayed home on New Year’s Eve, which was a pretty low key day. They want to try to stay up until midnight, and we agreed, so the whole day’s schedule was oddly shifted. We had a late breakfast, then lunch at about 2:30. We went to Dave and Buster’s until we blew through $40 worth of tokens (which took <1 hour, of course) then ran into an old friend of Emma’s from the daycare. They ran around the lawn at the mall for an hour while we chatted with the parents.
I cooked dinner at home and we ate around 9:00, then watched Toy Story 2 — the girls’ choice — and ate popcorn and drank hot chocolate. They were going strong at 11:00 but were fading fast by 11:45. By that point, we were so close to midnight that I had them jump up and down to wake up. Ha. But they made it! And were then asleep in bed by 12:05.
(Although, an addendum: holiday vacation plus New Year’s Eve has totally wrecked everyone’s sleep schedule, and especially Charlotte’s. This is entirely predictable, of course. Nevertheless we are all in for a rude awakening — literally — on Monday.)
We slept in on New Year’s Day and then went to HMNS for the afternoon to see the Lego exhibit they have right now called “The Art of the Brick.” It was really neat, and appreciated all the more since the girls love playing with Legos these days. We also enjoyed the butterfly center and several of the other permanent exhibitions. We go to HMNS about twice per year, so there’s usually something new to see or old stuff that feels new again.
Both girls went back to school on Thursday and Friday, which meant a couple days of free time for me and Jose (who worked a half day on Thursday but that was it). I walked both days, we had lunch out one day, and we’ve both gotten to tackle a bunch of other random stuff:
- I called the company that does recycling in our neighborhood and signed up. We have been getting recycling for free since we moved in 3 years ago…but they must have finally realized because they stopped picking it up. Heh. So now we’re legit again. And they even brought me a shiny new bin!
- I UNCLOGGED MY BATHROOM SINK. As you can tell from the all caps, I am pretty proud of myself for this particular DIY, as my drain had been slow basically since we moved in. Lots of baking soda + a gallon of vinegar + boiling water + poking through nasty gunk with a straw.
- We got a new water heater. It was nearly 10 years old and hadn’t been heating very well for months, so we finally decided to preemptively replace it rather than wait for it to cause a much bigger problem later. (We don’t have basements in southeast Texas so water heaters are usually in the attic. This makes for quite the disaster if/when they fail and leak everywhere.)
- The “check engine” light in our Highlander came on and it was due for regular service anyway so we got that done on Monday while we were in town. (Fortunately the light was for nothing significant.)
And less dull, more fun:
- I made and attached labels to both my QuiltCon quilts and am almost done with the hanging sleeves.
- I started working on a new pattern that will be released later this year.
- I ordered our 2020 family calendar. I always use a photo from that month the previous year, which means I always have to wait until late December/early January to order so I have a good December photo.
- I designed a fun t-shirt that I’m planning to wear to QuiltCon if it turns out well. I ordered a sample that should be here next week!
- Jose is making an album of all his astrophography, and a 2020 calendar listing key astronomical happenings.
It’s been a truly great break and I don’t want to go back to real life!
The water heater in the attic thing has always been so weird for me. I’ve only ever known them to be in the garage, both the houses I’ve lived in in Texas and in Florida—until the current house I’m in now, which has it in the attic! Houston thing, I wonder?
Thursday was hard for us—we all went back to school and work. And Forest stayed up Tuesday night so it was a rough week. Thank goodness we had a weekend quickly after!