As for the fun things we've been doing, Mr. Pickles took several days off the last week of summer vacation so we could do fun family stuff together. And naturally we forgot to bring the camera to anything, so you'll all just have to read the old fashioned way and imagine pictures in your head. Shocking, I know!
One Saturday we woke up and discovered that we absolutely nothing whatsoever planned for that day at all. At first we didn't know what to do with ourselves, but then we decided to make it a Fun Family Day and went to a local farm park. I had never been there, although the rest of the Pickles went last year while I was at a homeschooling conference. Miriam remembered a lot from last time and was showing me around. There was a barn with goats, sheep, and a couple litters of baby pigs, and giant horses. In the fields were cows and some calves, more sheep and lots more goats (including a couple really cute goat kids), and in pens there were chickens, turkeys, ducks, and a peacock (which sadly was molting so it didn't have a very impressive tail). It was neat watching all the animals. There girls were also impressed by the old farm's outhouse. :) At the end of the afternoon you could try milking one of the dairy cows. Miriam actually wanted to try it this year, and was very proud of herself that she actually got a couple streams of milk in the bucket. The cows were extremely placid. Katie's favorite part of the day was riding on the toy tractors, though.
Another neat part of the day was that there was an equestrian show going on all day in one part of the park. Miriam and I were in heaven. We watched a lot of the dressage and show jumping and talked about which horses were best and which were prettiest. If I were independently wealthy I'd totally have a horse and compete in shows. Watching the show brought me back to the happiest summer of my life, when I took horseback riding lessons. I think I was 12. They really made a big impression on me, and left me with a life-long desire to work with horses again someday. I was tickled that Miriam liked watching the horses as much as I did.
The next week we made our annual pilgrimage to a local waterpark. We had a bit of a crisis when we first arrived -- since it was the last week the park was open, its hours were drastically reduced and didn't open until 3 hours after we arrived. At first the girls were heartbroken. But I had noticed on the map that there was a zoo nearby, so we decided to check it out. It turned out to be the most fun day ever! The zoo was a great little zoo. All the animals were really tame and friendly (well, maybe all except the alligator). They had a petting barn full of sheep, goats, and alpacas, with lots of little baby animals everywhere. You could purchase a bucket of feed to give to the animals around the park, as well as baby bottles of milk for the lambs. There were a couple spider monkeys, which were fun -- the girls enjoyed watching them using their tails to hang on to things, as well as seeing the baby hold tight to its mother. The reptile house had a lot of really cool, enormous snakes that I was very thankful were behind thick glass. There was even a little 20-minute safari ride where we got to meet an ostrich named Tweety, a watusi named Bubbles, a blue antelope named Thor, and sundry other animals from Africa. Tweety thought my shirt tasted interesting. This zoo was right in the middle of the suburbs -- can you imagine waking up each morning to see zebras, ostriches and antelope right behind your backyard?? How cool would that be?
After we had our fun at the zoo, we headed over to the water park. Miriam had just recently discovered that she could swim unassisted, plus one of her friends showed up while we were there, so she was in little mermaid heaven. The water at its deepest was 3 1/2 feet -- just up to Miriam's shoulders. She went on all the slides she could, and climbed on all the floating rafts, and jumped and splashed and had a gay ol' time. Katie, on the other hand, spent most of the time shivering. Poor kid -- I need to get her a wetsuit. She wasn't quite old enough yet to really enjoy the park -- she went on one slide and climbed on a plastic turtle and splashed a bit in the shallow parts. But once she got Mr. Pickles' undivided attention while I tried to keep up with Miriam, she had more fun "swimming" around (wearing a big life vest). Joseph had great fun splashing and trying to grab streams of water, and just looking around and listening to all the water. At the end of the day we were all thoroughly tired out. Katie fell asleep in the car on the way home, fell back asleep on a chair after we got home, slept through dinner, and didn't wake up when I deposited her in her bed. She woke up next morning amused to be still in her clothes.
So the day was a big success!Later in the week we went to see an exhibit of Jim Henson's Muppets at one of the many pocket-sized museums in DC. It was a really neat exhibit with lots of interesting background history. The girls, not surprisingly, enjoyed the hands-on part where you could use felt pieces to make your own muppet faces, or perform your own puppet show which showed up on a TV screen. It was one of those fun touristy things that we only do once a year, since we live here, so why should we do touristy things? I hope to be able to take advantage of more museum exhibits like this and incorporate them into our school year. I love the flexibility of homeschooling!
The rest of our Last Vacation Week was spent around the house, relaxing and doing last-minute school planning and bickering and getting on each other's nerves -- so we were pretty much ready for school to start. :)
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