Category: outing

For today’s field trip, we stayed local. A former student of my mother’s came to share her expertise in percussion. She brought her guitar and had drums, and for an hour the kids got to bang away and try out the different instruments.

Perhaps the best part of the day was watching Shep, who was clearly in his element. From the minute he walked in the door and saw the guitar, he was beaming from ear to ear. He sat himself front and center for the class, and sang every song and played each instrument.

I think I need to take this as a gentle nudge that I really need to hunt down the number for the local Kindermusik teacher.

Today’s field trip was to a little art studio in the Big City specifically designed for kids. When Neko was two we had taken a series of classes there, and loved their great ideas and rapid pace. When I discovered they offered open studio time, we gathered up a small group and headed south.

We immediately dove into paint, clay, beads, shaving cream, and a slew of other things. The hour flew, and wrapped up just as some of the kids began to get a little antsy.

Some went home to nap, and others headed to a nearby park for lunch, playtime, and VERY friendly ducks, who probably ended up eating more than the kids did.

Today’s field trip? The local bowling alley.

I don’t know why, but we’ve never taken the kids bowling. Neither Tom or I are very good, so I suppose it just hadn’t occurred to us. But when I drove by one day, I decided it might be a good outing.

I was thrilled to find out that all the lanes were easily convertible to bumper bowling, so we set up six lanes and the kids went to town. We even got a behind-the-scenes peek at the mechanics, a beautiful system of gears, pulleys, and levers that reeled in and reset pins and balls. I would have taken pictures, but the attendent was a little grouchy, so I didn’t want to push my luck.

The kids had a blast, and many of the adults decided that maybe bumper bowling would be a pretty good outing for the over-18 crowd as well, particularly those of us who regularly score in the 30s.

Once again, I’ll throw this on the “to do again” list. It’s a keeper.

I’m discovering lately that sometimes, if you just ask, people are more than willing to share what they do with you. This has come up a lot when I scheduled field trips for this summer. When I called the small local airport to see if we could come out and see a real airport, they sounded a little surprised. They asked what we wanted to see, and were more than accommodating.

After I got off the phone it dawned on me that the reason he seemed a little surprised is probably that no one ever really takes a field trip out there. It’s a small facility and it doesn’t get a lot of traffic. But for us? A perfect outing.

We began with a tour of the hanger where they keep a few privately owned planes. Then we got to take a full tour of their personal plane, first on the outside and then each child got to go inside. And after our tour was over, we got to watch a plane taxi and take off. An added bonus? A helicopter that was practicing on one of the landing strips, taking off and landing over and over.

Sometimes I grumble about this small town we live in, but the familiarity it breeds often opens up doors we might not dare to knock on in the Big City.

Two things I need to remind myself after today’s outing:

1. Whenever we go to somewhere that has potentially gorgeous photo subject matter, I should double-check to make sure I remembered the good camera. Which I did not.

2. If I ever complain that I live in a rural town where there’s nothing to do, I need to remind myself that, with a little digging, we can uncover little gems like the one we visited today.

Today’s trip? The local observatory. But not just any observatory, one with one of the oldest telescopes of its kind in the country. Since I’m a designer who has a great appreciation for how people made mechanical things work back in the day, as opposed to someone who actualy has a great deal of interest in astronomy, this observatory is a perfect fit for me.

Now you might be thinking that really old telescopes and small children are a terrible match, but it actually turned out amazingly well. Our guide, Dean, tailored the program to suit the fidget level of our kids. After a quick power-point presentation about the planets, everyone got to practice looking through cardboard telescopes before we graduated to a small real one.

Then he led us up to the two big telescopes. Particularly with the old wooden telescope, I was amazed by the detail and craftsmanship. All motion is controlled by ropes and gears, and each child got to take a turn helping to move it into position. If the telescope itself wasn’t impressive enough, we all let out a collective gasp when Dean cranked the ceiling open and suddenly we were all looking at the sky. Truly astonishing considering it’s over 150 years old.

If you haven’t been, move this to the top of your list. We’ll be going back for an evening visit as soon as we can get it on the books…

We thought it would be a fabulous idea to get together with Marlo and the kids today. The aquarium had a new exhibit that sounded promising, and we thought we'd beat the summer vacation rush.

Instead, we encountered the "end of year trip" rush where (and this is not an exaggeration, we got the stats from the Aquarium staff) 400 school children entered the aquarium just moments before we arrived on the scene.

So, um, anyone up for the bookstore?

Important to note, however, that Neko wore her bat wings the WHOLE DAY.

In the middle of days of rain there appeared one sun-filled day. And we hopped on it.

On a side note, I will forever remember this time in Neko’s life as the time she wore nothing but this leotard and her rubber boots.

We made a trek to the museum at the Other Big City, since it’s pouring buckets and we needed to change things up a bit. I took some kind of ho-hum photos with my fling camera, but the one I liked best of the batch was this one that Neko took after art-directing Shep and Chris into posing in front of the sun.