Artsy-Fartsy

King Tut has been at the Dallas Museum of Art since last fall. Jesse and I have talked about taking at least Julie and David to see it. We had planned to go during spring break, but our plans changed two or three times before we finally settled on the week's activities. After hearing that one of our children's favorite author / illustrators was going to speak at the Museum Friday night, we jumped on the chance to attend the lecture. All things considered, we opted to buy a membership (discounted 10% because Jesse works for corporate sponsor Lockheed Martin - yippee!) which gives us two free tickets to the King Tut exhibit and a year-long pass to other general admission exhibits and activities. We've joined the enlightened ranks of the art intelligentsia!

Ahem, back to earth . . . While I purchased our membership, Jesse, my mom and the kids got our name on the "will call" list to see the lecture. Luckily, we were second on the list, so we made it in. We were privileged to listen to Mrs. Judy Schachner speak about Skippyjon Jones and her pets that inspired the stories. She was a delight to listen to and had a great slideshow of her pets' antics. After her narrated slideshow, Mrs. Schachner read Skippyjon Jones in Mummy Trouble, in which El Skippito goes in search of peas in the tomb of King Rootin-Tootin-Kitten-Kabootin. We have been fans of the Skippyjon series since Julie was in kindergarten, and we were very pleased with the lecture.

After the lecture we stood in a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very (you get the idea) long line to have our edition of the book signed. The kids did quite well until the last twenty minutes of the wait. We were down to ten people ahead of us; we could see the table where Mrs. Schachner was signing the books; but the kids were at the end of their rope. We toughed it out with a lot of whining, but we finally made it to the end. Mrs. Schachner was very kind, patiently took pictures with us (they're on my mom's cell phone and won't be available until she figures out how to download them), and signed our book (and the book my mom bought while we were waiting).

TAH DAH!

The inscription reads "I am not a human bean!" To understand this little inside joke, bounce to your local library, Scholastic book fair, or Barnes and Noble and check out or buy any one of the four Skippyjon Jones books. We are excitedly awaiting the new book Mrs. Schachner announced will arrive this fall. We won't tell you what it is about - that will be our leetle esecret. ;-)

(We still haven't seen King Tut; we will go in April.)