Friday in Minnesota

Snow! and the girls charged outside (after laboriously layering on clothing) to touch the white stuff. Megan's not so thrilled. But Emilee knows you have to clear off the slide before you can go down.

Matthew and I head to downtown Minneapolis to see the newly renovated Guthrie Theater. The architect, a Frenchman, wanted to raise the theater up a floor in order to take in views of the Mississippi river just outside its door. To convince the theater director, the architect took him up in a cherry picker while singing Old Man River. He won.

The front entrance. From the the front lobby you ascend a gi-normous escalator to transport you up to the 4th floor. This photo is looking down the moving steps to the sunlit ground floor.

One of the unusual features of the Guthrie is the catilevered catwalk out the back, where you can view the Mississippi. On the way to the end, slot windows with reflective metallic awnings create a modernistic view of the road below.

The catwalk. You exit through cobalt blue glass doors (on a cobalt blue glass wall, visible in the background in the picture of MJA above) to a small stepped patio. On a summer's day it would be perfect for sipping your soda during intermission. Today it was rather brisk.

Matthew and I are fooling around with our reflections on that glass wall. The blue band across my shoulders is the windows on the other side of the building, visible through our glass wall. Note the Pillsbury flour sign behind him. Minneapolis was once nicknamed Mill Town. The availability of grain, coupled with the churning Mississippi powered several flour mills.

The Gold Medal building is beside the Guthrie. Many of the more interesting old buildings have been turned into condos, including the North Star Blanket building behind Matthew. 

Now off to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), where they have many interesting things. Although the collection isn't very deep, it is varied, including this beautiful ornate piano.

And this wooden angel.

The Tatra car is on the T-shirts in the gift shop and rightfully so. It's beyond cool, and has what Matthew called suicide doors on the back (they open toward the front). I guess it's because if you open them while the car is moving, you're a goner.

Matthew identified the Warhol in the rotunda. The Chairman Mao series is on the right side.

After a quiet afternoon, back out in the nippy weather to the Minnesota Children's Museum, where Megan found the water play. Her mother's tying an apron on her, but she has her eye on the blowing hand dryer. So fun to push the button and have hot air come out.

This section demonstrates pipes and plumbing and how you can change where the ping-pong balls appear by turning levers. Emilee just wants to corner the market on the balls.

But her father and grandfather and another Dad are more interested in how to force the water up and over the tallest pipe. They were continually thwarted by busy little hands, but eventually they prevailed and the balls floated up to the top and over. (Hey Kim, I know a terrific Christmas present you can get for Matthew. . .) Reminded me of the summer the children built the marble raceway out of suspended paper tubes on the back porch in Texas.

We then hopped a bus where Emilee drove us to the grocery store. Or pretended to.

Kim had wisely picked a time when the crowds were lower. Once we got the fourth graders out of the World Market, Megan and Emilee went shopping.

Outside the market, Matthew tried on some fireman boots on Megan. We decided you wouldn't need a baby tether if you outfitted your child in these. She couldn't move very fast, but did do a little shopping. Slowly.

Kim and Emilee and Megan made an appearance on TV in the broadcast exhibit.

Floating fish in the atrium. . .

. . . where Kim wowed them with her hula-hoop skills.

Interesting signs everywhere. A sample.

Final stop: Dinner with the Threshers, where Megan stirred up some scrambled eggs for them. We finished the day with Dinner with the Children at Chipotle's (eat fast!!) , and a quiet evening.