Grandma Jan Outing

If you know what this is, you either live in Grand Rapids or you know more about art than the average Joe Blogreader. It's a view from the inside of a sculpture on the lawn at the Frederik Meijer Gardens by Jaume Plensa from Spain. This sculpture, like most/all the art there, you can't touch - but you are invited to walk inside the cavity of it and look out. It's a sculpture of a person, sitting with knees drawn up, made entirely of random letters. Grandma Jan took Simon & Anson & me to the Gardens & Sculpture Park recently for an outing.

Simon liked to find letters he recognizes. We had to get outside for the letters to face the right way, but then we found S for Simon, B for Bethany, G for Grandpa and Gerard, A for Anson...I think that's all he knows now.

We walked through a few sections of the outdoor sculpture park first, then came in to walk through the indoor stuff before heading out to the Children's Gardens. Here's a photo inside with the most beautiful, colorful flower arrangements.

Anson hung out with (on) me the whole time. He loved it. :)

On to the children's area. Everything is outdoors, kid friendly, and hands-on. What joy!

Hugging a huge pumpkin

Looking at rainbow circles

A photo in a big mirror with all four of us

Simon among the bird eggs in the person-sized nest

The best part was the Great Lakes water. They have small pools of water that are the shape and relative size/elevation of the 5 Great Lakes that surround Michigan (and further East). They have several boats & toys for kids to play with, and it was a warm sunny day, so this was the biggest hit! Good thing I thought ahead and had a complete change of clothes for my little water monkey - he was soaked from head to toe.

He made a boat parade on the edge. Fortunately, there were enough boats that Simon wasn't diminishing the fun for any other kids by taking so many.

The happy ride home with a few small toys in his lap