CANMT Trip: NCCIL, Peter Pan, Dallas Temple

 After Frontier Texas! We went to The National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature (NCCIL). The exhibit in the gallery while we were there was The Fantastic World of Dan Yaccarino. I had prepared Melodie for this by checking out a bunch of his books from the library. "Unlovable" is one of my favorites. The only character Melodie knew from his books was Oswald. She knows the Backyardigans from TV, but I felt she'd enjoy the center more if she was familiar with the stories.

A volunteer greeted us and said we could join the school group that was on a field trip if we wanted to. Melodie said no.

We started walking around the gallery, but every time we moved Melodie almost started crying and hid behind me. She kept saying she didn't want to go with the group of kids, and I kept telling her we weren't. It didn't matter. She started crying and saying she was shy (she isn't). This went into full blown meltdown as I took her out of the center to the car ("I don't want to leave!" she was screaming). We got to the car and I let her get it out of her system after yelling at her "I was not taking her to the group of children, so I have no idea what your problem is!". She'd done so well on this trip. I was surprised that it took this long for a meltdown. Then I noticed her lip was bleeding. We all had very dry skin from the wind and her lips (despite all the chapstick applications) were so cracked that the upper one started bleeding while she was crying. Surprisingly, taking care of that calmed her down and we were able to go back in to look at the rest of the gallery. There was also a room of books to look at.

I was thrilled that there were Robert Sabuda books to look at. Our library doesn't carry them and they are always wrapped in plastic at book stores.                                 
 I'm glad we went to NCCIL. It was small, but it was free. I love books and I was thrilled to share that with Mel. Dan Yaccarino's paintings were amazing.
 Now we were on our way to Murphy, TX (where we would be visiting our friends), but there were still two more stops along the way.
 I'm not sure how I found this. It seems that if there's something to do with Peter Pan, I will find it. Sure enough, while planning the trip I found out that the city of Weatherford, TX was the place where Mary Martin was born. I can't tell you how many times I've watched my VHS tape of her as Peter Pan. Turns out there was a stature of her as Peter Pan in front of the Weatherford library. Since Weatherford was along our route, we stopped for some pictures (after I changed into one of my Peter Pan shirts).

 

 Melodie played on the computers at the libraries for a little while and then we were on our way again. Before long we arrived in Dallas. We live in So Cal, but the freeways in Dallas were crazy. And there was a lot of construction. Our GPS did not do well. We got a little lost a few times, but eventually we arrived at the Dallas Temple.

 We walked the temple grounds enjoying how beautiful it was.

 

We tried to find someone to take our picture, but there wasn't anyone around. So we tried to take a family shot by ourselves.

And finally people started coming out of the temple. Unfortunately the doors are at the very back, so we weren't able to get a picture in front of the temple. So the picture is us by the side of the temple, but at least we got a family picture!

 We were almost to Murphy! A few more wrong turns and we were finally at the Gamlen's house. Melodie, Jason and Cassie were soon playing like they had never been apart and I LOVED girl talk and catching up with Jennifer. I think poor Rocky was just waiting until Josh came home. We started laundry (Thank you Jennifer! We did soooo much laundry.) and made dinner.

Soon the kids were in bed (and so was Jennifer). Rocky and I stayed up talking with Josh. He was so busy at work we were very thankful for the time he was taking off to spend with us (and his family of course).