Day 37

Today began a little differently than every other because we had a birthday to celebrate! We've missed bunches of summer birthdays of friends and family, but always have been home for Brayden's big day. Since we schedule our trip so late this year he had it on the road this time. We started out the morning with his breakfast choice - donuts, fruit, and yogurt. He was pleasantly awoken by his sisters and sung to by all of us. We didn't have candles so he blew out our fingers with mine counting for ten years and each of the girl's counting for one year.








We made it into the city to try to finish seeing the exhibits of the American History museum and possibly move on to something else. Boy were we wrong! The invention stations were open this day so we spent the better part of the first two hours solving the world's problems. They invented tools to scoop plastic out of the ocean, energy efficient houses, and learned how to optimize solar panels for the most energy.

   

After we examined the mansion of a dollhouse, we headed to the Food exhibit. The kids didn't want to spend too much time here as there were a ton of facts to absorb, but they did enjoy seeing Julia Child's full kitchen all set up.  I was fascinated by the graph of the rise in snack food since the 1970s. Weird to think people actually used to eat real food!!

By far their favorite section of the museum this day was the transportation wing. There were trains, cars, buses, subways, tractor trailers and so much more. This was possibly the spot that I was able to read the most as the kids had a blast "riding" on the subway over and over. As if we hadn't already done that all summer!!

I

 thought of my friend Lydia as I listened to the interviews from "Car Talk" as I was standing next to the cars they were calling in about. For those of you that have had the unfortunate experience of getting microwave popcorn kernels in your air vents, rest assured they will not pop when you turn the heat on.

The last wing we visited contained the American Stories exhibits. We saw the lunch counter from the 1960  sit-in in Greensboro.

We saw a pair of Dorothy's shoes and Muhammad Ali's gloves. And so so much more!

    

We even saw some things from Breaking Bad, a show Dave and I are currently still trying to finish!

After a visit to the gift shop we were almost on our way out of the museum when I remembered the entire reason I wanted to go there - the Star Spangled Banner exhibit! Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures, but what we saw was awesome. In very low light mounted in front of us was the flag Francis Scott Key was looking at when he wrote the "Star Spangled Banner" during the Battle of Ft. McHenry. There were many holes and souvenir cuts from the flag, but it was very inspiring to stand in front of it.  Across from it there was a blown up image of the flag on a screen you could drag around with your hand and learn more about its construction and history.  

Now that we all felt very patriotic, we decided to go outside and
play on the National Mall grass. We couldn't stand it very long with the heat, but we did have a fun time while it lasted.  Once we were all sweaty, Ryan reminded me for the 47th time we needed to go back to Gordon Biersch to get Brayden some birthday cake since it was his actual birthday.

When we got back to the campground we played a little camp ball until I couldn't stand the thought of bare feet and ticks anymore.  We had a new audience this time - a large family of deer.

Ryan couldn't wait to get home to test out her new robot that could walk up glass. He needs a little motivation sometimes, but for the most part it was a good purchase. 

Once we'd finished dinner we read a few chapters and said goodnight. We had yet another busy day tomorrow!

Day 12

Apparently I jinxed myself with the complaining the day before about the adult scouts being loud. Granted it was Friday and we were camping pretty close to New York, but our site was in the middle of at least 8 families that knew each other and were ready to hang out around the fire and chat it up all night. Lucky for us, the campsite directly next to us was where all 30 of them wanted to gather. We read 4 extra chapters of the book just because I knew the kids (nor I!) would be able to sleep with the amount of noise that was happening. Yep, these people were not low talkers.

I finally sent the girls to their tent at 9:30 in hopes the group would abide by the quiet hours beginning at 10pm. That was the point when they pulled out the karoake machine. The girl thought it was awesome! I could hear them giggling in the tent as I sighed heavily to the start of each new song. While Brayden read on his Kindle, I lay there listening to fabulous top 40 hits of the last few years.

For a policy that is "strictly enforced" according to the check in papers, this one took some time. The first visit of a ranger was a simple driveby at 10:01pm. Neighbors started visiting asking for them to at least stop their kids from running around in the dark screaming. By 10:20 they were getting enough visits they decided to turn off the karaoke machine, but they had to spend 15 more minutes finishing their conversations and saying goodbye. The ranger then threatened to kick them out and we were surrounded by the silence of the woods. I think I fell asleep in 12 seconds.

The kids have gotten in the routine of getting on the road early, so by the time I'd showered and gotten a car breakfast ready the kids had everything packed and ready to put in the car. We were on the road by 7 and ready to make it to our first stop. We were getting to the good part of our latest audiobook, The Island of Dr. Libris, so the kids opted to listen to it the whole way.

Having just studied the colonial time period for history in the fall, I knew our next stop would be a perfect learning experience. We stopped at Old Sturbridge Village for a few hours to see a little of what it would be like to live in a colonial village in the 1830s. This is definitely Laney's thing. Our first stop was French and English tug of war. The English won!

       


Next Laney wanted to take a carriage ride around the pond, so we were able to check out much of the area led by the beautiful, one ton horses, Jim & Jerry.


  

Next we visited the bank, tin shop, yarn dying area, and one of the typical homes of the time.

   

        


Ninteenth century baseball was next. They played with an ax handle and rules were a little different - base running clockwise for example - but the kids had a blast.

                    


Then we walked up to the school house where the kids tried a few games. They all enjoyed sitting at the desks the kids used comparing it to their school which takes place all over the place!  Ryan was surprised to read about how all the kids from kindergarten through early high school age sat in one room until she realized that's exactly what we do too, especially at homeschool co-op!

                           

Next up was the pottery house and the carding mill where they processed wool into batting or strips for spinning into yarn.

   

   
After visiting the farm, we came back to the common to enjoy the toy balloon flight demonstration. The kids love hearing stories about what kids their age used to do and this was exactly what some curious boys used to do when they were interested in science and figuring out how things work.

       

After lunch we saved their favorite part for last where kids could experience more hands-on opportunities for play. We waited until it was hot to visit this part of the village before we left.

       

After we made it through some traffic, we found another science museum I knew the kids would love. It was part nature and part hands-on science with an exhibit on immature activites for kids - perfect! Our first stop though was a very cool exhibit on ipads showing normal every day things magnified millions of times.  Some things, like dust mites, we didn't really want to see but others like fingerprints, orange peels, and pencil lead looked very cool. Dave, Brayden, and I had seen an IMAX very similar to this somewhere and this was a fun refresher!

  

























Next up was definitely all the imature stuff. After playing in the mirrors and experiencing winds of a hurricane, we learned how to fold rings out of dollar bills, make boomerangs, flip spoons into cups, catch things off elbows, fold footballs, flip cards, and all the kids favorite - pull tablecoths out from under dishes! We must have spent 2 hours in this section. It was so much fun!

                       


Once we'd had enough we went outside to play with the bubbles until they closed shortly after. Like water, bubbles are usually an instant mood changer.

                                                 


We all left with big smiles on our faces and headed to our campground. Unless we were going into Boston naked, we absolutely needed to get some laundry done so once the kids finished dinner we headed back into town. Grammie had made it into Boston so we were texting trying to make plans for the next day. We decided to meet at the train station and go into town to get our feet wet in the city.

We were all pretty exhausted from the night before and our full day, so once we got back to our site I left the laundry unfolded in the bag and we all crashed.