Road Trip Ramblings

The kids and I set out on a road trip last week to Ohio to visit my husband.  Along the approximately 2000 miles that we drove, I learned a few things.  Here goes:

1.  This traffic sign,  , means there is no peeing in the grass. (Thank you, Sean.)

2. Taking a few minutes pre-trip to prepare travel games make the miles go much faster.  

3. Eating an apple straight from the tree in a bonafide apple orchard is the best!  Abbie was unable to resist the temptation.  And though we don't know exactly what the fruit on the tree in the garden was, IF it was an apple as so many people think, I can see why Eve was tempted.  Just sayin'.

4. Polar bears are bigger than I thought, but they are not quite as white as I expected them to be.  Grizzly bears are scary --- even with a ravine and a fence in between you and the bear.

5. The dinosaur exhibit at the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium in Columbus, Ohio, is stunning.  However, it is sad that the highly educated in our world continue to tell us that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago.  It's just become boring to correct them, which I guess is okay because my kids know the truth anyway.  In their favor... the spitting dinosaurs on the boat ride were cool.  However, poor Emma thought that somehow they had put real spit in them. When we told her it was just water, she was not nearly as grossed out.

6.  Missing a week of school puts us off our schedule but is so totally worth it when you look at all the lessons we did learn.  Thanks to home schooling though, we can turn ANY trip into something educational whether it be visiting the zoo and learning about the animals, visiting an orchard and seeing exactly where our food comes from, visiting the fruit market at the same orchard and looking at different varieties of gourds, seeing fall foliage (which we just don't get in southwest Mississippi), reading maps, calculating how long it will take us to get somewhere based on the number of miles and our speed, or even reading menus.  Abbie is studying community helpers as her social studies unit in K4, and she even role played being a waitress at Steak & Shake -- complete with her paper hat -- though I've never actually had a waitress take my order in crayon.

7. The greatest gift of all is spending time as a family.  The most important thing to me is the legacy that I leave my children.  I want them to grow up and remember the quality things that we did together.  I hope and pray that the time I put into them will lead them to raise their children well.  

I want to grow old and remember their laughter -- there is no more beautiful sound.