(Surprise) Field Trip: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

December 2020 perspective update: After I posted this, I was contacted by my local museum about my experience. They wanted to talk to me about how to make it more kid-friendly. I kick myself every day because I didn't go talk to them! In 2008, I was in the trenches of parenting and homeschooling 4 kids and having a ball with it and didn't want to leave them crying at home to go have a meeting. I caught some crap about even taking my kids to a nice museum in the first place, so I took this post down. Here it is again though, because I believe in taking kids to museums! In fact, you'll find an entire category about it on my blog now! Happy historical hunting!

Photo taken at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art January 2020

I’d found these cute cartoon DVDs at the library that let you “meet” dead artists like Picasso and Matisse and learn about their art. I can’t draw to save my life, but my kids got some artistic talent from their dad, which is another reason why I homeschool. I don’t think one hour a week for art in school is enough. On the rare occasions when I sit my butt down and color or attempt to draw or clumsily do a craft, it relaxes me and I lose track of time just like the kids.

I love going places with my kids. When I have a tiny baby, it’s certainly a challenge, and I usually have to schedule things around having a helper come places with me (Mom, Dad, Aron, my cousin Zee).

Otherwise, I don’t mind taking them to the pool by myself. I don’t mind taking them to Target. I LOVE taking them on educational and fun trips. Even driving to Phoenix (and San Diego) from Kansas City this summer for a 3-week adventure was a great way to get out of the house and just be with my kids.

So one day last week I washed the sling, put the double stroller in the trunk, packed PB&Js and yelled for the kids to get in the van. I had decided the day before that we were going on a Surprise Field Trip to our local museum.

I told them we had to go out for chocolate, which we did. Then the whole way to the museum all I heard was, “Where are we going?” so I turned up the Christmas music louder. We ended up staying for two hours. I called it a reconnaissance mission. The goal was to familiarize them with the museum so we could go back again and see other things and maybe stay longer the next time. Admission was free (donations gladly accepted) and parking was only $5, so it seemed like a deal to me.

Once someone asked me if I left my younger 2 kids with a sitter while going on a homeschool field trip to PetCo. And I asked her this:

Why does a field trip have to consist of 1 teacher, 3 parents, 1 guide and 25 kinda bored kids who are just SO excited to be out of class that they don’t pay much attention anyway? It’s true that Joel enjoyed the museum more than the little ones, but they did okay. Next time I may send Joel along with just his dad or a grandparent, though, so he can see what he wants without being rushed.

But how cool is it for a kid to spend an afternoon with his mom and siblings being unrushed and learning what he wants to learn about? All too soon my kids won’t want much to do with me (eeek … the teen years!). I need to love on them as much as I can right now, today. I dig being a mom, and I want my kids to feel that.

The only incident was when Callie couldn’t keep her hands off sculptures and paintings at the end. I told her she’d go to Art Jail, but it didn’t work. When she full-on fondled a painting called Bikini from 1964, a mean older guy guard barked at me that I “might want to get control of that one.”

Yes, Readers, you know me. I first said, “You have no idea how right you are, Sir.” Then I got mad as I left and was muttering things like, “I’m gonna get control of YOU, dude!” and “It’s a PAINTING; not life or death. Jeez. Maybe if you had some stuff they COULD touch they wouldn’t want to touch EVERYTHING.”

So that’s my biggest beef with the museum: that they just did huge and expensive expansion but didn’t do anything for kids. I realize the Nelson is a grown-up art museum and I took a 3-year-old there and told her not to touch anything (so I was totally askin’ for it), but Phoenix’s museum at least has a nook for kids to touch stuff and read about art and draw.

A good lesson was learned today, though. On the way to the museum we drove through a very ritzy neighborhood with lots of what Joel called “mansions.” He said, “I’ll bet the people who live in those are really happy.” I said, “Not necessarily. I wouldn’t be happy in a house like that because I’d have to clean it. Also, we’d never see your dad because he’d have to work all the time to be able to afford our home.”

I believe that if I teach my kids that all there is to life is attending college and making lots of money, then the homeschool experience will have been a complete and total failure.

Interview: Jessica G. Fisher of LifeAsMom.com

A couple of years ago I started noticing Jessica Fisher’s name in almost every issue of Kansas City Parent magazine under “contributing authors”. Her bio said she had five kids, and I COULD NOT UNDERSTAND how she had time to write and send off a publishable article every month. I had only one under my belt and couldn’t fathom ever getting another idea.

I assumed her kids were in school or that she had a nanny. So when I noticed her bio said she now has SIX kids and listed a website address, I ran to the computer and typed in the address. Turns out she HOMESCHOOLS, just like me.

Jessica has a great writing website and also a blog (she wants you to “join me on the Road to Joyful Motherhood”), as well as a book that you can order off of her blog called “Cooking With Children.” Below is a short interview with her.

KERRIE: How do you find time to write with 6 kids and homeschooling? Do you have a schedule? Write when they sleep?

JESSICA: Usually I take Saturday mornings off. That is when I have done the bulk of my writing, pre-baby. I would head to Panera as early as I could wake and come back at lunchtime. I got a lot done during those 5-6 hours. Since the baby was born, I just fit it in here and there, often in the mornings before the entire household is awake. It just doesn't seem productive to go sit in a coffee shop to hold a fussy baby when I could do it so much more comfortably at home. Since I started writing, I've simply put other hobbies (mainly scrapbooks and shopping) on the shelf. There is only a limited amount of time to devote to these things, so the other interests gave way for this one.

KERRIE: When did you start your freelance writing business?

JESSICA: I started writing for magazines in 2006.

KERRIE: How many publications have you written for?
JESSICA: My work has been printed in about 70 regional parenting publications in the US and Canada.

KERRIE: How much time do you spend on it in an average week?
JESSICA: That really depends. I don't have set hours. And I can't really control when I'll get a good idea. I have multiple notebooks here and there for notes. I write whenever I have a good idea and the time to implement it

KERRIE: What percent of your income would you guess is based on reprints?
JESSICA: I have no idea of the percentage, but I usually sell the same piece many times since most of my clients are not in competing markets.

KERRIE: Does anything suffer because you write? (e.g., the dishes sit for a while, the laundry piles up)
JESSICA: Household chores certainly back up, but I don't think that is because I write. If I wasn't doing this, I'd have some other creative project to distract me from housework.

KERRIE: Do you older kids help with chores so you can get writing done? (I am a
big fan of this!)
JESSICA: Writing is something I've always loved, but it is by far a part-time job. I didn't go looking for another job. I love my day job. All my kids over 4 years old have regular weekly chores, but they would have that regardless. They were doing it long before I was writing.

KERRIE: How do you keep the kids occupied while you write?
JESSICA: My kids love their free time and since there are so many of them, they pretty much entertain themselves if I'm doing a task. But, I try not to sit down to write a piece if I know I will be interrupted many times. I try to wait until everyone is asleep for the night.

What I learned from this interview:
Strangely enough, I hadn’t thought of borrowing my husband’s laptop and heading to a place with WiFi and getting some writing done on Saturday mornings (he’s off every other Friday as well!). I guess with all his travel and then trying to catch up on home matters, I didn’t realize that our baby was one year old and that I could leave her for a couple of hours with Daddy and siblings.

What I love about Jessica and her family is that she MAKES the time to write, and her husband supports that by helping with the kids. I expect to see her cranking out a best-selling non-fiction book when her latest baby gets to a “leave-able age.”

I need to set my alarm so I can get some quiet time alone in the mornings, especially since I’m between babies and don’t need as much sleep. That’s much more productive and more kind than trying to write whenever I THINK the kids are occupied and then yelling at them for breaking my concentration.

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Jesus Shops at Hobby Lobby

(This is a second-hand story, so it’ll be like one of those Geiko celebrity reenactment commercials)

Recently my good friend EK went to Hobby Lobby. She was looking for a basket to put her Christmas cards in and wanted a nice blue (go, Duke!) bow for it. She couldn’t find exactly what she wanted, so she went to the Help area to see if someone there could tie a bow for her basket using the ribbon she had found.

They told her they don’t perform that service anymore.

Defeated, downtrodden, broken, crushed, head hanging down and tears falling from her eyes … what was our heroine to do? She NEEDED that bow on that basket but certainly was not able to tie it herself.

Then a 50-year-old female shopper happened upon the tragic scene.

Shopper: “You need a bow tied? I can do that for you.”

EK was so happy she almost cried. “Thank you, thank you, most generous woman. May I name my first born after you?”

Shopper: “Uh, sure, lady. But you might wanna rethink that. My name is Melba.”

EK: “Why, that is PERFECT. My new husband has been eating loads of melba toast lately. I shall name my firstborn Melba Toast in honor of your kindness.”

The moral of the story is that God is everywhere, just looking for a way to help us with matters both large and small. (But we’ll call that woman “Jesus” since it’s almost His birthday and all that.)

Chocolate Suicide Recipe

I made this for Eva’s first birthday party along with a strawberry cake. Man, it was a lot of work de-seeding all those strawberries. We also had 3 ice cream choices (all Edy’s): Espresso Chip (my favorite!), Vanilla and Double Fudge Brownie.

Chocolate Suicide
1 box Devils food cake mix (including the ingredients needed: eggs, oil)
12 oz bag of choc chips (or more)
1 1/3 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons butter

Bake cake according to directions. Let cool completely.

Ganache:
Place chocolate chips in bowl.
In sauce pan heat cream and butter until mixture boils.
Pour mixture over chocolate chips and let stand for 30 seconds.
Whisk until smooth.
Let cool for 15-20 minutes

Crumble cooled cake into small pieces and put into large bowl.
Add half the ganache mixture and mix well (it should resemble fudge).
Place in prepared cake pan and press down and smooth the top.
Freeze for one hour.

Remove cake from freezer, cover top with remaining ganache.

You can put berries on it to make it look pretty or just dig in! Just make provisions for your small children if you have some still living at home because you will go into a chocolate coma!

A birthday FYI: I did a PowerPoint slideshow for Eva’s birthday with EMF’s song “UnbeliEVAble” (available on request). I also do a birthday letter for each kid for their birthday every single year. I put a copy in a binder, a copy in our fireproof box for the kids to have someday and a copy in my scrapbook.

How Much Allowance Do You Pay Your Kids?

I got tired of being one of those over-indulgent mothers who buy their kid something every time they leave the house. So when the boys turned about 5 and 7, Aron and I discussed chores and allowance. Those boys could darn well buy their own plastic animals and gum. (Flash forward 12 years to the post How to Make a Simple Chore Chart for Kids)

I got an allowance when I was growing up (FYI and shocker: I'm an only child). I had a different chore for every day of the week: dusting, vacuuming, changing the cat box, cleaning the bathrooms, dusting again. Every day I had to clean out the cat box. Mom wouldn’t let me near the laundry, which was probably best. I only had to do dishes in the summer when I was home all day. You don't even want to know what that house looked like a few months after I moved out!

Some parents don’t give an allowance. That’s cool. You are part of a family, Kid, so you should chip in. I agree.

I know a woman who pays 7 cents per year of age of the kid, which is too complicated for me. That’s taking homeschooling to the extreme, and it hurts my brain. So I would be making 7 cents times 37 years is … my brain hurts already. And my oldest son would be getting 49 cents per week? What’s he going to buy with that? That’s not even minimum wage in Kid World. Talk about living below Poverty Level.

My boys basically do the same chores even though they are 22 months apart in age, so I pay them the same: $3 per week (plus 50 cents to church and 50 cents to their savings account). Yes, it does add up, but I definitely love having the help bringing up dry laundry and diapers, putting away silverware, recycling, emptying smaller trashes into a large one. I will keep adding chores (vacuuming, dusting, dishes) as they become more capable but will keep the allowance amount the same for a while.

My friend Ellen charges to mediate, which I LOVE. If her kids are loudly fighting and asking her to do something about the other kid, she says, “Okay, I charge a quarter per fight to mediate.”

I wrote this little piece for KC Parent Magazine titled The Allowance Conundrum, so check it out!

What are your opinions on allowance?