The excitement to play with the cousins this morning proved to be too much for one of my girls as C woke up at 4am, 5:30am, and then again at 6:30am asking if she could go downstairs and play with them yet. My niece and nephew are early risers, but my girls typically are not. With all the time zone changes and varied bedtimes and wake-up calls, hardly any of us are getting a good night's sleep anymore anyways.
The kids all played together while Eric got ready to go to the funeral and Jaimee and I talked about what we would do for the day. It was such a senseless reason for that officer to die, made even more upsetting by the fact that he was so young himself and he had little kids at home. There would be a huge procession in his honor today (10 miles of patrol vehicles) on the way to the memorial service as the city grieved for the second day in a row, following a local firefighter's funeral yesterday.
After Eric left, we packed up the kids and headed to a local coffee shop for breakfast.
My three girls with my niece and nephew together in the center
The first room of the museum acted as an introduction to the instruments that were to follow, and took some time to compare the similar instruments from around the country, like these lutes.
And these guitars
The center one in the glass case was from 1590, built in Lisbon, Portugal
The guitar collection included acoustic and electric guitars of all shapes and sizes, as well as a couple of harp guitars.
so cool!
The next room over had an introductory movie and a collection of some of the biggest and smallest musical instruments in the world, like these two stringed instruments
not as tiny as your tiniest violin, Mom, but close!
They even had giant musical instruments hanging from the ceiling!
The museum was separated by continent and then had displays by country. Although they were all fascinating, here are a few that I took photos of. We had to speed through the last couple of continents because the kids were getting restless, but Jaimee and I could have stayed here all day!
crocodile noisemaker from Burma
These women from Vanuatu were actually playing music using the surface of the water. It was one of my favorite displays. The sound of the rhythms they made together were so cool!
This was one of C's favorites - a drum from Mexico made with rattlesnake tails resting on a cow skin hide. It says the tails buzz like a snare on the drumhead when it's played.
And this was another one of her favorites. I'm not sure why she took such a close-up picture, but it's actually a drum made of allligator skin, also from Mexico.
this recycled instrument display highlighted the people who take whatever leftover materials they can find and make very elaborate musical instruments out of them
We wondered why some artists, like this guy, were chosen to represent the US, Canada, and Europe, instead of other artists. Their choices were head-scratchers sometimes
an old-time parlor
the Rock and Roll area
bagpipes and accordions!! - who knew there were so many varieties?!
By this time, we had to throw the kids a bone, so we took them down to the Experience Gallery to make some music of their own. Jaimee and I were blown away by the 5,000 instruments from more than 200 countries in the main museum, but the kids just wanted to bang on something.
my nephew on the big drum
K on the guitar (she actually has been asking to learn how to play)
my niece on the giant gong
Everyone love the working nickelodeon, but no one loved it quite like my nephew!
After we thought they had had enough time playing the instruments, and just before they fell apart from hunger, we made a quick beeline through the Artist Gallery via the Mechanical Music Gallery. The latter was a smallish room with instruments that played themselves, like music boxes. But the Artist Gallery had a collection of instruments and costumes from a very random assortment of famous musicians. Some of them made sense, I guess.
John Denver's beloved guitar
Taylor Swift's area (she got two walls, like Elvis)
Steve Vai's triple-necked guitar
part of the Elvis collection
And we found one more really cool thing in the Artist Gallery - one of the actual 2,008 drums that played at the 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremony in Beijing.
After a quick stop in the gift shop where K picked up a slide whistle and C got a pan flute (so she can be like Puck, of course!), we headed out to lunch to refuel before we all fell apart. We decided on BJ's, which is a favorite of my girls and we made sure to finish off the meal with some Pizookies and beignets.
Once we were back at the house, all the kids played together some more and played with their uncle's dog, Kima.
A and Kima
E's line-up of cars and trucks
the girls playing some kind of wild animal game
the only boy playing alone (but I get the feeling he likes it that way)
Not too much later, it became clear that it was time to go. We had hotel reservations in southern California for this evening and the friendliness and emotional stability my girls enjoyed today was deteriorating rapidly as the early morning (and the last 30 days) started catching up with them again.
Cousin-love, aren't they adorable?
I left Phoenix, heading out into the highway craziness leading up to Memorial Day weekend. The witty message "Drive Hammered, Get Nailed" blazed on the LED light boards on all the highways here, no doubt encouraged by the recent death of the local officer who was hit by a drunk driver.
The evening started out pretty uneventful as I began the 5 hour drive to Ontario. But a short time after I headed into the middle-of-nowhere, my 'Maint Reqd' engine light came on. I was hoping it wasn't anything too serious since on the Saturday night of a holiday weekend I wasn't expecting to get too much help out here in the desert. I was glad to see that the engine looked good and the coolant was still full. The car was riding just fine and the temperature was fine, so I topped off the oil (which was really low and very black), and headed back onto the highway hoping my assumption was right that it must be just a maintenance light for the oil change I needed. I was already more than 4,000 miles over my next scheduled change even though I had one just days before I left for the trip. My poor abused minivan - she's so tough!
In Southern California we hit a huge windstorm with steady winds at 25-30mph and gusts up to 50mph. This time we didn't avoid the wind and found ourselves tossed all over the road with the other cars out there. The trucks, motorhomes and trailered vehicles all bailed out for the evening and I noticed how weird it was to not see any of them on the highway anywhere. The rest of us toughed it out, driving with both hands tightly gripped on the steering wheel and trying to stay in our own lanes.
I was really tired by the time we made it to the Ontario hotel and the girls were already asleep. We dragged ourselves upstairs and collapsed into bed. We are so close now!
No sunset pictures tonight, but I did get a cool picture of the moon.
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