A Week of Fun Around Town

Well...while most of the area was on their Spring Break this last week, we chose to keep our noses in the books....well or so we thought would happen.  We just could not resist a few trips into town, as well as some time outside enjoying the beautiful weather!  We will take our 'real' spring break during Holy Week at the end of the month!

As you saw earlier this week, we spent much of Monday at the funeral of one of our World War II veterans from our little church.

Tuesday, we actually did get a good day of school work done before heading to the park for our 4H project meeting.  We had a great time learning about turkeys and deer.

On Wednesday, we took a day to enjoy the museums in town.  We first went to our forestry museum to see the new exhibit..."Timber Town"...and participate in the annual Reading Railroad.  Normally, this activity takes place throughout the indoor and outdoor areas of the museum, but this year there has been a major renovation of the outdoor train exhibit so we were left keeping the reading stations inside.  It was still a great experience, as there was the new train model exhibit inside.  This was set up to represent our area's historical sites and it was hard to keep the children's interest with this hands-on exhibit available for the first time!  We did manage to hear a lot of great books from community leaders (train conductor, librarian, zookeeper, mayor, grocery store workers, businessmen, and pastors).  And, Michael and I both read books to groups of children as well.  In fact, Amanda and Sean took a turn at reading books to children also.  AND...Edward read a book to one of the community readers while she waited for a group to join her station.

After a quick lunch, we made a side trip to our local art museum...there was a new exhibit...“Look To The Past — Reflect On The Future”...We were most interested in the black-and-white photography of Rosa Parks, as she rode through Montgomery, Ala., during the early days of the civil rights movement. We thought it was interesting that in the seat just behind her, a young white man staring almost expressionless was Nicholas Chriss, a reporter who worked at United Press.  He was assigned to interview Mrs. Parks.  We would love to know what these two people were thinking during those days of change.

We also enjoyed other photos from this collection, as well as other exhibits (civil rights photos, early county history, and nature photos) in the museum.  Another new exhibit still being created was available to view...a definite work in progress.  There seemed to be a focus on art created from paper but there was also a creation that represented a playful table and chairs covered with a quilt to create a hide away like we would have as a child.  The children (and Michael) enjoyed this open creation.

As you read in an earlier post, we arrived home to learn about our new Pope!  So amazing to hear the news and learn about this holy man who is now our Church leader.  We also made it to Mass in thanksgiving for our pope.  Fr. Joseph blessed all the blankets and quilts so we can make our delivery to the women's shelter next week.

We thought we would spend Thursday to complete our week of school work (knowing Friday would be busy).  We had a good morning and had just had lunch when we saw a truck pulling up the driveway.  We had surprise visitors!  We finished up the assignments we were working on, and picked up our fishing poles!  It is so nice to have a stocked pond just a few steps away!  We spent the afternoon catching our dinner!  I made an impromptu meal plan switch to add cole slaw (It was as if we planned it when we bought a double bag of cole slaw mix earlier in the week...not a normal purchase since it was not on the menu.), baked potatoes to go along with the fish caught.  I even had time to make an applesauce cake!  A great dinner with good friends!

Then Friday, we woke up in time to head out quick to the VA clinic.  We had our monthly trip to serve sandwiches, donuts and coffee.  We had a slow day at the clinic...we learned that most of the doctors had taken Spring Break also!  So, the patient flow was low...we had the time to talk to the few veterans who arrived for their appointments.  We also left a little earlier than usual.

That early release from serving the veterans allowed us the opportunity to go to a local quilt show!  We loved the time looking at the quilts made by some of own favorite quilters.  The boys even voted for the quilts they liked the most!  We learned about the quilter's guild and hope to join them from time to time when we have the time.  The quilters we spoke to were impressed that the boys were so interested.  We told them about our memorial quilts and we hope to show them our pictures when we attend the next meeting.  (SIDE NOTE:  If you followed those blog posts, I have gone back and added pictures to those posts of the finished quilts!  I also created a book using the reflections called "Lessons from Newtown."  We hope to mail a copy to the priest we spoke to from Newtown soon!)


We did manage to come home and complete most of our school work for the week.  It will eventually be completed so no worries here!  It was a good week of learning.  I have learned that not all learning comes from books!