A few years back — I think it was after we’d had our third son, S — my father, sister, and bro-i-l drove up to meet the new baby. Due to work schedules, they couldn’t leave before Friday close-of-business. The same strong work ethic required they be home for start-of-business on Monday. But it’s an 8-hour drive, assuming you don’t have a bladder or require gas to power your vehicle.
If memory serves correclty, they embarked on the journey from Illinois at 4 am on Saturday morning, arriving in the Twin Cities around 11 am. You do the math. We visited, admired the baby, laughed, played, ate, and explored the local sites. They departed on Sunday around 10 am.
As my sister hugged me goodbye, she commented, “That was twenty-four hours of fun!” And then they drove away.
I have fond memories of that trip. It was fast, but full to the brim of love and wonderfulness. It’s the memories life should be made of: family togetherness, celebration of life, learning and experiencing the world around us. And we did it all in concentrate…in 24 hours. And it was FUN!
We arrived at our first destination last night about 10:50pm. Settling into the hotel was followed by some seriously appreciated sleep. We awakened, did laundry at the folks’ house, prepped for the day, made many mobile calls to family in Chicago, and so on and so on. These trips take on a life of their own.
I’m looking at the clock, seeing that it’s almost 10:50 and realize how much fun we have packed into 24 hours. I saw my dear Aunt S, my super diva cousin K, and newest cousin by marriage, K (I wish she lived closer). I met the infamous, Neal, my bro-i-l’s brother. He was in town from Peru. What an interesting job he has…I’ll have to share that another time.
We then went to the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago. If a person is truly focused, a lot of museum can be covered in a very short timeframe. I felt like Neo in the Matrix when he was learning martial arts as ultra-lightening speed. I’m also starting to think that we should end each homeschool year with a trip to this museum JUST because it’s so fun and I can’t imagine any subject area that it doesn’t reinforce. I think my favorite part of the day (and maybe Timothy’s too) was the chick hatchery. I’ll see if I can find a plugin to import the video we took.
The Dinosaurs Alive omnimax show was interesting. I’m curious to see how the dinosaur workshop at the Creation Museum will contrast in terms of worldview. I saw some parallels in theory and I’m intrigued at how it that discussion will develop between the approaches to time. Blah blah blah…
We had a fabulous taco salad dinner prepped by my mother. We watched G lifts 3-pound weights (comedy at its finest).
We have more pictures than I have time to manage right now. I’ll tackle that project in the car on the next leg of the journey. You will have to stop back for the pics of the boys on the GIGANTIC John Deere tractor in the Idea Factory section of the museum.
(Oh yeah, Henry stayed back and slept and snored and drooled until we reconvened at dinner.)
Gotta go finish packing in my 24 hours of fun!
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