Family Field Trip #1 (or would it be #2?)

Over the last two weekends, the girls have officially declared this summer, The Summer of Family Field Trips. Two weekends ago we went to the traveling exhibit of The Bible and The Dead Sea Scrolls at the Public Museum. As we got out of the car Alyssa asked, "So is this like a family field trip?" We agreed with her that it was, and Emma made it official this past weekend when she asked the same question as we headed to a multi-era military encampment. They decided that we should treat every fun place we go to this summer as a field trip, and while a military encampment might not sound like a "fun family field trip" our girls wanted to go here instead of doing a gymnastics show. Fortunately we were able to rearrange our schedule a bit and do both.

We don't have any pics from the Public Museum as photography was not allowed in the special exhibit area, but I'm sure we'll having plenty going forward. Here are some photos from last year's Reclaiming Our Heritage Military Encampment (I especially love the ones showing the re-enactment of the surgery).
Please excuse poor little Kamele's somewhat messy appearance. She insisted on having her hair in two braids just like the older girls had the day before, and her baby fine hair just would not cooperate. I think she had about four actual strands of hair that would stay braided. On top of the crazy hair, she was playing with rubber stamps right before we were ready to leave the house, and although it's faint, she got her cheeks and forehead pretty well stamped up. It was just one of those mornings that if I had waited for everyone to be all cute looking before we walked out the door, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere all day.


The girls were able to make beeswax candles...





They also wrote thank you letters to war veterans using feather quill pens and berry ink.





As Alyssa looked at this picture she wanted me to point out that she just now noticed that she left out the word "job" in one of her sentences ~ okay, correction noted :-)


This trunk full of a soldier's belongings was really neat. The old magazines and candies were so cool, I was afraid to let the girls touch anything.


Rebekah jumped into the driver's seat of this jeep.


An old fountain in front of the old Veteran's Hospital.


Exploring the Humvee. Rebekah was way more interested in the pond she's pointing to on her left.


We saw him last year as well, but the girls were really excited to see this Abraham Lincoln and hear him speak. He introduced himself as a historian named Bob. He explained that since he happened to look a little bit like Lincoln his presentations had the added benefit of him being able to tell stories from President Lincoln's point of view, as if Lincoln himself was remembering the tales and passing them on. This amused Alyssa very much. She kept saying, "Bob, Bob Lincoln. How funny!" {giggle, giggle, giggle}

We have read a lot about President Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address lately in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Pennsylvania, and it was super cool for the girls to hear him explaining about some of the exact events we had read about.


It's also noteworthy {at least to our girls :-) } that we saw both a family of ducks (a mother with 7 ducklings) and a beautiful family of swans. An exciting kickoff to our official summer of family field trips!