Category: outing

This afternoon we headed to our very favorite outdoor education park. We love this place, and visited so much last summer that the naturalists knew us by name.

As we walked in today, naturalist Kathy shouted, “We’ve missed you!” Nancy and I were the only people there, so our seven kids had the run of the place. They ran and played for about an hour, and then settled in for the afternoon class. This week? Maple syrup. Looks like Neko actually will get to learn about this topic after all!

Kathy tailored the whole class to pre-schoolers. The kids got to taste sap (which we discovered tastes and looks almost exactly like water), and then tap a tree stump, including drilling the hole and hammering in the tap. After that hard work? Pancakes! With maple syrup, of course.

After our pancakes, Kathy led us out to a tree they had actually tapped, and the kids watched the sap drip into the bucket.

Totally. Great. Day.

Before she skipped town and moved to Denmark/Minnesota/Massachusetts (they just keep moving!), one of our former playgroup friends, Kate D., used to talk about the educational materials collection at the college library. She has a preschool curriculum for Zoe that would put most early childhood programs to shame, so she was always checking things out from there.

I don’t know why it took us this long to visit, but as I mentioned, we’re on a mission to find new things in our own neck of the woods, so today we made the journey. It was chock full of all sorts of teaching materials and I kept looking around thinking, “And I can check these out?”

Of course, with three kids to attend to, I was a little overwhelmed and only made it out with a few things. As opposed to the children’s department at our public library, this library contains students who are pretending to study and librarians who enforce that whole silence thing with an iron fist. Before we entered the building I gave the kids a big lecture about being quiet, the result of which was Neko periodically screaming loudly at Shep, “You need to be quiet!” and Shep continuing to be as loud as a nearly three-year-old is on an average day.

After we weathered a moderately successfully trip, as per Akiko’s hot tip, we took a sharp right out of the educational materials area and found ourselves face to face with a fully staffed Starbucks. In the library. With coffee. And pastries. I think my college library had maybe one vending machine with stale pretzels, while today’s college student can take a break from the stacks with a ventimochafrappathing and a scone. Heaven, I tell you.

Anyway, we made it home with a coffee for me and smoothies for the kids and these three dimensional charts of the different body systems. Shep has been totally excited about discovering that food turns into poop, so I thought we might try to impress upon him that the process is a little more complex than that trick where the magician has a quarter in one hand and then all of a sudden he pulls it out of your ear. Which right now is about as complex as it is in his head.

It’s crazy cold outside. Stupid cold. Even though we got some snow, I shudder at the thought of going out to play in it.

Yet, I’ve got these three kids. And after, oh, I don’t know, six hours in our house, the kids start to climb the walls. Or each other. Plus, that basement that I cleared out so the kids could ride tricycles and work off all that energy in the midst of winter? Still trashed.

But I’m trying hard to think outside the box, but at the same time, not travel to the Big City every day. All that driving is exhausting and it means losing all of Ellery’s naps to the car.

I often forget we live near a small college, and that college has resources. Akiko suggested a great diversion. The rec center has a small indoor soccer area which is totally enclosed by walls so that practice doesn’t bother the adjacent basketball players. We took the kids and way too many balls and let them go nuts. There was running and kicking and throwing, and Akiko and Beth and I probably all looked much relieved as we left the building, knowing our kids would be tired that afternoon.

All pictures other than the first taken by Neko (with less than optimal lighting conditions).

With all this holiday let-down, the behavior has been the pits. Temper tantrums are the norm and we’re feeling a bit like the Gaza strip, although I’m not really sure who is Israel and who is Palestine.

Our tactic? Divide and conquer.

Tom kept the younger kids home for nap, and I sprung Neko out of quiet time to go ice skating. She took lessons last year, but wasn’t too keen on that whole being out there without a good friend or family member, so she declined when I asked her if she wanted to continue.

But I thought I’d give it a whirl again (the skating, not the lessons), and I’m amazed at what a difference a year makes. She loved it. She smiled and laughed and giggled and insisted we go as fast as possible. Although she wasn’t too keen about the idea of skating without holding my hand, she was almost doing it on her own. A few times she let go and did just fine, but quickly realized she would go faster holding on. We took a break for pretzels, but otherwise skated for the whole two hour session.

Next up? Skiing!

This post should be full of idyllic photos of us getting our Christmas tree, but instead I will treat you to an iPhone photo of us driving through the very mediocre drive-thru Xmas lights display put on by the local parks system. (We can all later discuss the irony of an organization that encourages preserving our ecosystem coordinating an event that puts hundreds of people idling their carbon-monoxide producing vehicles in the middle of a national forest.)

Anyway, the reason we ended up there was that on both Saturday and Sunday we attempted to get a Christmas tree, and as we got within a five-mile radius of the Christmas tree farm, Mother Nature sat back with a big belly laugh and threw torrential rain in our general direction.

By Sunday night we owed the kids some sort of holiday experience, so we waited in this endless line to see Christmas lights in the shape of mostly totally un-holiday like stuff, like Beauty and the Beast and Alice in Wonderland.

Next weekend we are getting a tree, weather conditions be damned.

Tom had to work all day, so the kids and I hit the road. We headed to the aquarium, where they have this whole show where Santa and his sleigh are under water.

It must have been a slow day at the aquarium, because Santa was all over the place. First he was at that show, then he was in the shark tanks, and then he was hanging out in the lobby on the way out. If Santa really does move around this fast, maybe he can deliver all those presents in one night.

You would think I would have learned this earlier in my 4.5 year stint as a parent, that one should always call ahead and check on whether a place is open before you go. Even if all signs point to the fact that it should be open. Like they’re having a big Halloween festival at night? One might assume that means that all the facilities are open during the day, but one would be wrong.

Akiko and I took the kids to a local farm which claims to be “open” 365 days a year, open being a relative term. The gate is open and the animals are in their pens, but, um, not a lot else. Unless you were a school group that called ahead. Which we weren’t. We did, however, discover a fun walking trail and the weather warmed up nicely.

But next time? I think I’ll call ahead.

Photo of Neko pretendeding to be a goose, homemade cat tail attached.

Today we took an impromptu trip to the aquarium. We actually made it in time to see the early morning lobby visit by a penguin. The kids were so excited that they were this close to a real penguin. The pictures I took were pretty poo-ey, so when we got home, Tom asked Neko to draw it for him.

Today we went on a very fun outing where the only good pictures I took were of other people’s kids.