Saved by a museum!

I've been nervous about what would happen if I ever wasn't completely prepared for the next day by the time I went to bed the night before.

Well, today I found out.

I got home from a get-together at a friend's house at about 10:30 last night, and decided to just go to bed with the intention of getting up early (5:30) to plan and put it all together. Yeah, right! I dragged myself out of bed at 6:30, and was NOT prepared when it was time to start school. The bummer thing about it, too, was that it would have been a virtually distraction-free day since it was raining this morning.

Oh well. Lesson learned.

By 8:10 in the morning I could tell that we were in for a rough day if I didn't think of something QUICK! I called up a friend who suggested something called Kidscape. She'd heard about it, and suggested I look it up on the Internet and see if it would be a good solution to my problem. I checked it out and it looked great!

I told the kids we were going to leave at 10:00 to go do something really fun, and that the house had to be straightened up and everyone had to be neat and tidy. We left a few minutes late, but I wanted Rachel to get a good nap in before we left. At least we got the house from trashed to tidy in that time.

It turned out that this Kidscape thing was a hands-on exhibit in the county museum. The museum had several adult-style exhibits documenting the history of our county, with kid-friendly hands-on exhibits peppered throughout.

Did I mention it was totally free?

We made it to the first hands-on exhibit, and David and Drew were just getting into it when Spencer informed us in no uncertain terms that he was hungry and he wanted to go eat. I had packed a picnic lunch with this in mind so we trooped back out to eat feed and water everybody. It was a chilly, wet, and windy day so instead of sitting outside like I had originally planned, we put the backseat down in our van and had a picnic in the back. It was actually really fun. I made PB&J sandwiches while we munched on hummus & carrots and chips & salsa. Thankfully I'd thought to bring plates for everyone so I didn't end up with a horrible mess in my car. Even Darcy got in on it all, though she wanted to crawl around and help herself to the food a bit more than I was comfortable with. She's becoming quite an independent little thing!

After everyone was feeling better, we trooped back in and proceeded to have a marvelous time. The first hands-on exhibit was an old-time cabin with a big cookstove, dry sink and water pump, wooden food, and a butter churn. The kids had a wonderful time "making" pies (very cute how the museum did it, too - they had a pie dish, cut circles out of craft foam for the top and bottom of the pie, and had bean bags made from apple and cherry fabric for the inside - I'll have to remember that for Christmas!), frying bacon and eggs, and baking cookies. Darcy "set" the table for dinner. Outside in the "yard" was a little garden with wooden veggies they could plant in little holes, a chicken coop with chickens and eggs, and a clothes line with pins to hang the laundry up with.

After they tired of that, we went on to the next exhibit, though this one didn't hold their attention as well. It was basically baskets of rubber vegetables that they could pretend to play store with, but the idea wasn't as interesting to them as running ahead to see what else the museum had. :)

Also, we had a little diversion at this point. Spencer loves to re-fill my water bottles for me, and he had a little trouble with my latest one (it's rather big). He brought me back the bottle half-full and told me he'd spilled some water on the floor. I told him to show me, expecting to find a little bit of water spilled. No, there was quite a flood on the floor that he and I cleaned up together. I'm glad he told me or I'd never have thought to check, and someone might have gotten hurt by slipping in all that water.

Anyway, we zoomed on through most of the rest of the exhibits until we got to the Kidscape part. It was awesome! There was a little theater with a stage, curtains, theater seats and an entire backstage room filled with props! There was a bookstore with lots of books from the county library that you could "check out" with a little scanner that beeped, and several bean bags in the corner to get cozy in. There was a room FILLED with cars and trucks and trains and little cities to play in. There was a park with a mini-golfing range (two holes, two clubs, and LOTS of balls), a painted pond with fish and fishing poles and a Wii to play baseball on.

There was a doctor's office with babies to play with and weigh, lots of doctor toys to play with, and a wooden person to operate on, complete with hinged doors on his chest to open him up and take out the heart, lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines. There was even a little door on his leg so you could operate on his bones. Apparently this guy was my husband and Drew the Doctor was unable to save him. He died several times while we were there. So sad. I cried lots of fake tears.

The last room was a boutique with boxes and boxes of beads and pipe cleaners to make jewelry with, magnetic "paper" dolls to change clothes and play with, and rows and rows of craft materials like stickers and glue and feathers and puff balls to make random things with. IT WAS AWESOME and the kids had a blast!

I'm so glad I wasn't prepared this morning. The kids and I had such a fun time doing something we probably wouldn't have gotten around to for a very long time, if ever. Now we're going to have to make sure we go LOTS of times before the exhibit closes in January. Next time we'll bring friends, too.

Though, now that I know what happens when I'm not prepared, I'm not going to bed tonight until everything is in place for tomorrow.