Rikki's Reflections : Field Trip Week!

This week seemed to be full of outings and it went by so fast! One day, we got to do something fun and out of our regular routine as a reward. It was actually kind of a cool, windy day but the kids voted on going to their favorite walking path (we hadn't been there in awhile). We had a lot of fun walking the path, picking up leaves, pine cones and acorns for the squirrels at home. There are also activities to do throughout the trail so the kids usually try those and we call it PE. :)

Random picture: We had a couple nice days and had the windows on the porch open--look how nicely Nathan and Cinders are getting along! So refreshing to see! :)

The next outing was a bigger one! I had heard about these historical ship replications and thought it was too good to pass up! It was about a 3 hour drive and I figured it wouldn't take long to check out the ships so I looked to see what else we could do and found a zoo just minutes away from the ships. Best field trip ever was planned! We weren't able to go until Sunday because Hunter had a Scouts thing on Saturday but I think that worked in our favor--nothing was busy!

We got up early--really early--and woke the kids up equally as early and headed out before the sun came up. We stopped at a rest area and it was pouring down rain. I took the 3 big kids in and made the boys go in the ladies' room with me because I was nervous about sending them in a rest area bathroom alone. Maybe that's weird. We then got back on the road and 20 miles away, Lily started crying about her stomach. We had to go a couple of exits before we found somewhere that had a gas station. We were seconds from the gas station--it was in our sight!--and Lily threw up all over {my parents' van they had loaned us for the DVD player}. Oh man! So, we stopped and everyone gathered on the curb to watch Brian clean out the van. Poor girl just gets car sick {like her Mom!}.

As you can see, she was fine right after and we just took a 30 minute detour to our trip. At least the rain had stopped. :)

We made it to the ships and that was a lot of fun for us to see. The only problem was that you had to walk on these docks to get to the ship and I was pretty anxious about the kids galloping along so close to the water. I don't know where this anxiety comes from--both my Grandmothers, probably. :) Anyway, we climbed aboard both ships and looked around and then made a beeline for sturdy ground before I would let anyone discuss it. Ha!! I hope it was a good picture of the time period we are learning about in history!

As expected, viewing the ships didn't take long at all so we then headed to the zoo (okay, we first stopped at a park's outdoor bathroom for a child who swore they couldn't hold it any longer). The kids loved the zoo! It was great because hardly anyone was there and the weather was great at that point. If you want to stand in front of the tigers for hours, you could have! It had a lot of great animals {lions, giraffes, tigers, rhinos, monkeys, zebras...} so that was exciting for the kids. It was a small zoo, though, so we were done faster than we had hoped. We took a little bit of time to just play and climb just to avoid the van a bit. We then piled back in and made it home much faster than the previous trip!! The boys all zonked out on the ride home but no one slept long. It was a lot of fun to do something special as a family. I think summer trips will be out for us--we'll plan on these fall ones, instead!!

You can see here that Lily is holding her stomach and not quite sure she's still feeling okay but she perked up with lunch. Oh, traveling with kids! Anyway, the kids LOVE seeing the big snakes so they had to have a picture with this rock python.

Nathan loved being free of the stroller! He ran around and the kids chased him for awhile. :) This was in the Africa section on the zoo and it was very educational, besides having animals. It had recreations of houses, animal pens, crop holders, etc.