Vacation Day 9: Jim Henson's Fantastic World

We got up at 7am today and made the drive to the capitol city of Little Rock to visit the Arkansas Arts Center. It’s about a 3.5 hour drive each way – we slept a lot in the car today! We went for the exhibit, Jim Henson’s Fantastic World. It was a traveling exhibit by the Smithsonian Institution that is only there for a few more days. We met some of the most famous Muppets in person! We saw Kermit the Frog, Bert & Ernie, Rowlf the Dog, some of the Fraggles, and other Muppets we never knew existed! Unfortunately, they didn’t allow photography inside the exhibit. But we didn’t know that until I had already taken a picture of Kermit – so at least we have that!

The article Vavu clipped out when he found out about the Henson Exhibit

Arkansas Art Center

Vavu and Aiden going inside

Jeremy and Uncle Howie at the entrance

Aiden taking pictures with his new Spiderman camera

Kermit THEEEE Frog

Jim Henson was a fascinating person – we saw some of his original sketches and storyboards, special books produced for the exhibit, independent films and commercials he made, and drawings of how he envisioned the Muppets should work. For instance, we saw a sketch of Big Bird with Jim Henson inside, working the puppet. His head was only as tall as the base of Big Bird’s neck, and his arm reaches way up to the top to operate Big Bird’s face. It looked so uncomfortable! The person who finally ended up operating Big Bird had to wear a video monitor strapped to his chest inside the suit, so he could see where he was going. We got to see how Bert and Ernie work – Ernie takes two puppeteers to operate. One guy controls one hand and the head, while another guy controls the other hand. Bert operates by one person with a hand for his head and another hand holding his arms by sticks.

Entrance to the Exhibit (that's Jim Henson in the flying suit)

Jim Henson Sketch

Entrance Area

Aiden did such a good job taking pictures with his camera...then it fell on the ground, the batteries fell out, and he lost all his pictures (AGAIN). The only picture he took after that was this one of his Spiderman shoe. :-( We'll try again next time.

After the exhibit, we went to see the Capitol building. It was really close to the Arts Center, so we couldn’t just leave without seeing it!

The Capitol of Arkansas

Before leaving Little Rock, we had to make a quick stop at the Babies ‘R Us, because there isn’t one back by Vavo and Vavu’s house. We realized that we needed to purchase a rain cover for the stroller, because in Florida, storms can move in so quickly that you park your stroller outside an attraction and come back out and it’s soaking wet, because a storm moved in while you were inside the attraction! Plus, we want the kids to be protected while they are actually inside the stroller and it starts to rain. It’s really cool. It’s waterproof and has little windows for the kids to look out and little vents to keep the air fresh and circulating. We’re glad we were able to find one.

On our way home, we stopped at Hardee’s – the version of Carl’s Jr. over here. They are basically exactly the same, except they offer different a couple of different menu items (this one has biscuits). Nothing really fancy, but it was fun to see the name be different.

Carl's Jr. is Hardee's here.

Andrew at Hardee's with Jeremy and a real Arkansasian

Jeremy Playing Drums at the Table, singing the beat to the Blue Man Group

We got home pretty late, so we hung out and watched some more home movies, just for fun. We saw some of Christmas, Easter and Great America during all different years. It’s cool to watch all the Pascoal kids growing up. It’s also amazing to see the kids who have children now, because it isn’t until you compare them at the same age that you see how much the grandchildren (Aiden, Maddie & Alyssa especially) look like their parents.

L-R: Gina, Andrew, Stephanie, Mom and Tim on Easter

L-R: Andrew's Vavo, Andrew, Dad and Tim

Andrew in his Kimono at Christmas

Andrew on another Christmas, at the 65th Avenue house (Mom climbing behind the tree to get more presents)

A little bit of video footage for you: Peter's the cranky kiddo in the high chair. That's Steph next to him in the turquoise.

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The best part of day 9 was meeting Bert & Ernie, watching home movies from when Andrew and sibs were kids, showing Aiden and Jeremy what Daddy looked like as a baby and at their ages.
The worst part of day 9 was that Little Rock is so far from Bella Vista (Andrew says his butt hurt).

What we learned on day 9 was Jim Henson made the first Kermit out of his mother’s old coat and ping pong balls for eyes. Hardee’s seems cool cuz the name is different from Carl’s Jr., but it’s really just a Carl’s Jr. It’s hard to tell between Christmas 1987 and 1988.
The weather on day 9 was light showers, followed by mild temperatures and high humidity.