Today

Trying to "catch up" on blog posts makes me feel like I'm falling further and further behind.

Our adventures sit on my camera and patiently wait their turn to be documented.....while they pile on top of one another!

So, TODAY I'm actually writing about what we did TODAY!

HA!

Ezra's been dealing with a weird little virus,

but he FINALLY woke up this morning feeling better and ready to play.

I could tell yesterday that we was on the mend, so I planned ahead and bought tickets to a museum we've NEVER been to:

The Legion of Honor.

We packed a lunch and our cameras

(Ezra got a "kid tough" camera in his Easter basket this year)

and headed out the door.

I couldn't believe how amazing the view was from the museum's front steps...

(Ezra's pic...can you see the bay?)

...and the building itself blew my mind!

I kind of felt like we were on vacation in a European country.

Especially with Ezra's touristy little sunglasses and leg pop pose.

HA!

In the courtyard we found Rodin's Thinker.

We have a board book about San Francisco that has this bronze cast in it so Ezra was pretty impressed to see it in person.

He even tried his best to snap a picture.

=)

To be fair...it's a pretty huge statue for such a tiny camera.

We made our way down the columned hall to enter the museum...

...I couldn't stop talking about how beautiful it was so my photographer snapped another picture for me to remember it by.

We excitedly walked in, and almost instantly I felt that glorious, hushed, awe that art museums full of people absorbing beauty have...

...Ezra, on the other hand, had a fairly hushed...

FREAK OUT!

I might as well have taken him into a haunted house!!

He took one look at all those HUGE oil portraits and was scurrying to get out!!

If he hadn't been so truly frightened it might have been a little comical...

...the way he looked up at a gigantic painting of a scowling Duke and gasped...

...then darted to another wall...

...looked up a looming painting of a sober Lady and gasped.....

...he was scrambling around the room like a trapped hummingbird!

It was like something out of a cartoon episode.

Who knew that could happen??

I'm sure that no one around us even noticed what was going on.

He was so quiet....but so determined to get out!

I scooped him up and made our way deeper into one of the halls that didn't have so many oppressive oils.

I talked to him the whole time about how everything he saw was made with paint, stone, or clay....nothing was real.

He mumbled something about monsters as we sped past a wall size oil painting of a lady preparing for her wedding day.

=(

I thought for sure we were going to have to leave....

but while we were zooming through one of the rooms, Ezra quietly said,

"Hey!"

and pointed to a picture on the wall....

...Great Grandma Gladys has a print of this beautiful girl in her living room.

Something clicked at that point and he began to feel a little more comfortable.

Not really comfortable enough to leave my arms for long...

...but not so spooked!

I asked if he still wanted to leave and he said "no" while curiously looking at a small sculpture of a baboon.

We found a room full of Monet, Manet, Renoir, and even a tiny Van Gogh .

He liked saying all the strange names and the watercolors seemed more approachable.

Moving on to the hall of statues and sculptures, we found this beautiful wooden sarcophagus.

Ezra was fascinated by it....but didn't want to get too close.

HA!

We spent about an hour, exploring and slowly getting used to the museum's atmosphere.

We even made it back up to the original room full of early American portraiture that initially had him climbing the walls.

He found a picture of a dog and his master that he really liked....

...but didn't want to take a picture of.

He announced he was ready to leave, and I set him free in the sunshine to race around the museum's gigantic fountain.

Then we tossed pennies and enjoyed our picnic lunch.

All in all it was worth the trip, and a welcome break from our daily routine.