museum madness

you can't put a price on culture, but the local art museum comes close with its monthly "free admission day". the gallery was surprisingly family friendly, with stations set up around the various exhibits including activities and art projects for the pint-sized patrons. kelley and i would love to go back sometime, as we understand there is also art somewhere in the building.

pen saddles up and dons the lice infested cowgirl's hat for the full experience.

one room had costumes for the kids to play with. once the other kids had all suited up, penelope was left with her pictured ensemble. ever the paradigm of contentment however, she was simply satisfied to be part of the group. in her own words, "eli is a bird, and penny is a towel." the experience has left me with a slew of low maintenance halloween costume ideas.

eli gives a "tip of the beak" to james hurst as the famous "scarlet ibis".

we also made our own bird masks, which eli found to be hilarious but were strangely unsettling to me. they seemed somehow the garb of some ancient pagan rite. kelley suggested that the masks closely resemble those worn by the antagonists in m. knight shyamalan's "the village". she may be right, although i think their masks had a bit fewer light blue crayon markings than eli's.

eli was delighted that the masks offered long range kissing potential.

we threw one of the hedonist masks on penelope as she played outside in the fountain, which to our great amusement, she made no attempt to remove. she must have run around for ten minutes in a deluged tribute to the bird god children of osiris for all to see.