It's late and I'm tired, but I just wanted to quickly post that we made it home from Omaha this evening. Thanks for the prayers and all the comments!
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May 24, 2011
May 23, 2011
Little House Trip, Day 7 and counting
This morning we drove two hours from Des Moines to Omaha and went to the Henry Doorly Zoo. It was wonderful!!! My favorite thing to see were the bats. Do we have a bat exhibit at the FW Zoo? If so, I don't remember it. But this zoo had many different bat displays and it was wonderful.
We also loved seeing the bears...doesn't this one look relaxed?
Another treat was the indoor rainforest. There were lots of monkeys...
and birds...this one is on her nest!
Another exhibit that was interesting was Creatures of the Night. I'd hate to swim in this pond...
Our flight was to leave at 3:40, but when we got to the airport, we found out it was delayed two hours because of the weather earlier in Dallas. Later, they CANCELED the flight. Ugh! Next flight to Dallas is at 6:05 tomorrow morning. I'm not going anywhere that early, so we are back on the 3:40 flight tomorrow.
I told Meredith that our flight was canceled and we were going to have to spend the night in Omaha..."Do you think we ought to stay at that hotel with the waterpark again?" I asked. She ran to Margaret and exclaimed, "Margaret! I have the BEST news!!! Our flight was canceled!!!"
I'm glad someone was happy. ;-) Actually, I'm happy too. It's fun seeing them have so much fun. This waterpark is the perfect bookend for both ends of the trip.
But I will be glad to get HOME!!
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May 22, 2011
Little House Trip, Day 6
A Pocketful of Posies
(Ignore the two reflections at the top of this picture...I couldn't get a good picture without them.)
The whole reason we planned this trip for the time we did was so we could be in Muscatine, Iowa at 2:00 today to meet the very talented artist, Salley Mavor.
She sews all of her compositions by hand, each one taking two weeks to a month to finish. It took her three years to sew all the illustrations for her book A Pocketful of Posies. When I got this book last year, I fell in love with the illustrations and wanted to see the works in person. Salley Mavor's website told me that the closest we would be to any of her works was Muscatine, Iowa, so here we are.
Really, a photograph, neither in the book nor taken by me, can do justice to these works of art. There is so much detail!!
Here is a close-up of Little Boy Blue...
One of my favorites:
One for Mrs. Simmons...
Another favorite of mine:
You just can't tell how lovely these are from the photos. They are beautiful and it was completely worth the trip for me to just see them for an hour, visit with Salley, and hear her short presentation.
On top of all this fun, we've been listening to Little Town on the Prairie. All of these books are new and wonderful to me, but this one is my favorite so far.
We are now at a neat hotel outside Des Moines with an indoor/outdoor pool and bunk beds! The girls are excited. Tomorrow we finish with a two-hour drive to Omaha, a too-short visit to the zoo there, then home sweet home.
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May 21, 2011
Little House Trip, Day 5
Yesterday Meredith started complaining of a sore throat. If you know Meredith, you know a sore throat means one thing...strep throat! Luckily for us though, when Meredith decides to get sick, she picks the best place to do it...Rochester, MN, home of the Mayo Clinic! I took her to the Mayo Clinic Express, which was inside the grocery store. They took a culture and gave us a number to call at 6:00 for the results.
After the doctor visit, we drove to Waterloo, Iowa. It POURED on the way down there. As we passed through Spring Valley, I saw a sign that said, Wilder Museum. Now, we are done with then Little House part of our trip....what was that doing here? It was the Wilder side...
It was raining and closed, so we didn't get out of the car. In Waterloo, I took the girls to the Plelps Youth Pavillion. (At this point I didn't know for sure Meredith had strep...she didn't have a fever and felt good enough to want to go. I did keep her away from other kids and have her wash her hands a lot.) Here they learned to milk a cow...
Drive a tractor...
And find out who painted this painting (Grant Wood, from Iowa).
They also got to build (using plastic boards with strong magnets on the corners)...
a hotel...I was their first guest.
At the hotel, the girls swam in the indoor pool, which I believe if you ask them at the end of this trip their favorite part, they'll tell you it was swimming in the indoor pools....I remember feeling like that too when I was a kid!
At 6:00 I called to check on the results and sure enough, Meredith has strep. I think it is a rebound of what she had a couple weeks ago, so they prescribed a stronger antibiotic. Even having strep though, Meredith doesn't seem very sick. She didn't have a fever and played all day.
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May 20, 2011
Little House Trip, Day 4
Today was my favorite day so far! We started off with a surprise. It wasn't as good of a surprise as the waterpark was, but still a surprise. We had spent the night in Mankato, MN. The girls were expecting to go to Pepin this morning. Instead, we left all our stuff in the hotel room and raced to be at a certain house by 10:00. When we pulled up, the girls saw two houses, directly across the street from each other.
Maud Hart Lovelace (thr real Betsy) wrote the Betsy-Tacy series based on her own childhood friends and experiences. In fact, Bick (the real Tacy) and Maud stayed friends their entire lives, even going on a trip together to Europe in their 70's. Tib (who moves to Deep Valley, aka Mankato, in the second book) was also a lifelong friend. There are lots of similarities between Maud Hart and Laura Ingalls...they both just had one daughter who in turn didn't have children, both daughters are the ones that encouraged their moms to write their childhood stories, and both also wrote for magazines.
We bought the audio CDs of Betsy-Tacy and it has been fun listening to it while being able to picture everything.
After Mankato, we drove to Pepin. Instead of heading to the Pepin Historical Museum, which is where all the Laura stuff is, I drove straight out to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Wayside.
My girls loved running around in the grass, picking dandelions, climbing trees, and hosting a tea party in the cabin.
The cabin is basically unfurnished and completely unattended, so they had full reign. I loved how peaceful and quiet it was. Surrounded by farm land though, it was hard to imagine the Big Woods.
We all agreed the Pepin was our favorite Laura stop, probably because it left the most scope for imagination and play. This Minnesota/Wisconsin area is beautiful! Lots of farmland, rolling hills, millions of dandelions that are really pretty when you see a whole field of them, and many trees in bloom. If you look carefully in the picture below, you'll see yellow pollen right below Margaret's nose from having sniffed dandelions all day.
Stop and smell the dandelions!
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May 19, 2011
Little House Trip, Day 3
What a busy day! We started out eating gluten free pancakes at the bed and breakfast, then hurrying over to the Ingall's Homsetead. The Ingalls' family lived both in town and on their homestead. We really enjoyed joining a field trip of third graders from a nearby town. This picture gives you an idea of what it must have looked like a hundred years ago:
At the Homestead, the girls made corncob dolls, ground wheat in a coffee grinder, made rope, and rode in a covered wagon.
We visited a one-room school, investigated a replica of the claim shanty Pa built...
and pretended to keep house in a dugout (I'm so glad I didn't have to live in one of those!!).
After that, we headed for Walnut Grove, MN. The Laura Ingalls' Museum in town is just that...a museum. Margaret got bored just looking at exhibits, although Meredith and I learned some interesting things. They both enjoyed the hands-on room where they could play. Unless you like looking around at museum exhibits though, this is a place I could have skipped.
The thing the girls had most been looking forward to was playing in Plum Creek. Unfortunately, they have gotten LOTS of rain up here and the creek was very full. We did see the impression of where the dugout was.
The girls wanted to get into the water, although there was only mud. Here is a picture of Mererdith right before she got a leech on her!
When I found a tick on me, we decided to call it a day and head to Mankato. We had gluten-free pizza at Godfather's Pizza and now the girls are swimming in the hotel's indoor pool. I'll leave you with Laura Ingalls Wilder's Scriptural guide (which I have a copy of if anyone wants one):
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May 18, 2011
Laura Ingall's Trip, Day 2
What a great day! We left Omaha about 8:30 and headed north. As we drove north on I-29, I noticed that we were on the Lewis and Clark trail. When I saw a sign for Lewis and Clark State Park, I just couldn't resist a quick detour, so we went a few miles out of the way and saw a beautiful lake with a keel boat like the one Lewis and Clark used for exploring the West.
Our next stop was in Sioux Falls, SD to eat a quick lunch and see Falls Park. Unfortunately we only had a few minutes there. It is a beautiful part of the Big Sioux River that cascades over many short waterfalls running over red, smooth rocks.
We finally made it to De Smet about 2:30. The first stop was the Discover Laura Learning Center. It was set up as a one room school room and had a of couple exhibits about how Mary (Laura's big sister who became blind at 14) learned, plus about pioneer life. One hands-on exhibit had the girls glue split peas on to a piece of paper to spell their names in Braille. Another exhibit showed how Mary would use a special slate that had raised bars to be able to write in a straight line.
Then we had a guided tour of the Surveyor's House where the Ingalls lived that first winter in De Smet.
Then we saw the school room where Laura first taught school at 15.
We also saw the school that Laura and Carrie attended, although it is still being renovated. Our final stop was the home Pa built two years after Laura and Almanzo were married. The girls loved this home because they got to play a fiddle (not Pa's real one of course...it is in Missouri)...
and the pump organ.
A garden had some stones with quotes by Laura engraved on them. I'll leave you with one of my favorites, "The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes - it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies."
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May 17, 2011
Laura Ingall's Trip, Day 1
Laura Ingall's Trip, Day 1
We made it to Omaha. It is beautiful here! After stocking up on groceries at the awesome grocery chain, Hy-Vee, we checked into our hotel and the girls found out Surprise #1...a small, but very fun, waterpark in the hotel! It's like a mini Great Wolf Lodge (but much warmer).
Meredith enjoys dumping water on her sister.
There is also this cool, round pool area that has jets that really makes it a whirlpool. You get in and the jet stream carries you around the perimeter of the pool.
There is a 3-story slide that curves around and around. Above is Margaret coming out.
My sweet girls are having a such great time! So am I. It's fun watching them have fun.
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May 16, 2011
Great Day at the Park!
We are blessed to have a wonderful friend named Amy that has a knack for organizing super-fun outside games and activities. Our homeschool group had its end-of-the-year field day at a park near our house and about 60 home-schooled kids showed up to play. My girls had a great time! Amy even pulled off an ice cream sundae bar. Thanks Amy for planning such fun for our kids!
Margaret running to fill a tiny cup with water, then race back, without spilling much, to pour into a jar to "flood the Trinity."
Meredith doing the balance challenge. These kids could stand on one foot for so long they started making up new rules (hands behind your back, eyes closed, etc.)
There was also a sack race...
and a "kick-the-beach-ball" down and back relay.
Neither team that my girls were on won, but they had a great time. Thanks again Amy!!
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