Monday, March 22, 2010

Some images of Spring Break

This week is not looking any better than last; Anthony is out of town again this week, and the next, and the next.  At least he is home on the weekends.  Nevertheless, we did have a good break.  The kids were just thrilled for a break from school.  We planned a trip to Ft Worth on the first weekend to see friends.  Since Anthony was in Dallas the entire week before, I decided to take the Amtrak from Taylor to Ft Worth, thus avoiding the dreaded Spring Break traffic.

I love love LOVE traveling this way.  It is so civilized, especially for traveling with little kids.  Only 2 bad things about it: there is only ONE northbound train and ONE southbound train PER DAY.  And its invariably late.  Anna passed the time by, of course, reading:

And Colin quickly made a collection of iron track implements:
At long last and with much excitement, the train pulled into the station.  We heard its whistle before we saw it.  So awesome.

The kids and I had lunch in the dining car, which was such a treat -- dining on NON fast food, no worries of getting ketchup all over my car, beautiful pastoral scenery.  I actually had a spinach salad with grilled salmon.  Service was excellent.  How fun!  Eating on a train!

Anthony picked us up at the Ft Worth station, and we went to our friends' house.  They have two wee ones, and we all get along swimmingly.  We went to the Science Museum, which at first I was sad to go inside a museum on such a beautiful spring day.  But lo! they had OUTDOOR exhibits, like this popular water one:

Colin and another like-minded boy built dams, then opened the locks to let the "fish" go, over and over.  Cute panchos, eh?  These girls enjoyed it, too (Audrey, Deedra, Anna):

But their best exhibit was the Dinosaur Dig - a HUGE sand pit filled with actual dinosaur bone castings. The kids had a scraper and a paintbrush, and spent hours discovering the bones.  The docents surreptitiously covered the bones with sand using their feet when the kids moved on to the next one.  Then you'd hear again, "I found a bone!  I found a fossil!"

Plumber-butt Colin gets in the action, too.

We also went to the Butterfly Garden at the Botanical Gardens.
Colin would get his nose so close to the butterflies, so he could get a good look at the proboscis.  Anna's hair turned fairy-curly in the humid mist.

We also feasted on pizza, sushi, pancakes, and played lots of baseball and soccer.
A good time was had by all!

5 comments:

get2eric said...

seems like you had a good time. Neat activities at the museum.
Anna will be nine soon. Wow.

Unknown said...

Very cool use of train transportation! Loved all the pics. Colin needs to see the massive waterflow exhibit we have at the CMH if he likes that stuff!

Emily said...

Sounds great! I love all the action shots and happy smiling faces.

Sinda said...

Sounds like a great weekend, and a perfect anti-dote to the alone-at-home blues.

Unknown said...

for the very bad, bad, disappointing people who weren't there for Anna's birthday this year...would you mind posting pics? Pretty please with a cherry on top?