Sunny Day

The girls were such troopers (sort of) during days and days in Boston that I didn't have the heart to take them on the detour by Washington, D.C. that I'd been planning for the drive home. Sure, Syd's a big fan of inter-city mass transportation, and Willow would looooooooove the Smithsonian, but it just felt like it was time for something much more young child-centered.

Instead, we went to a place where there was a sunny day.

A place where everything was a-ok.

Yep, we went to Sesame Place.

Was it naive of me to be surprised that Sesame Place was completey un-educational? It was, however, an excellent full-size, child-friendly amusement park. The kids got to ride some pretty great rides that you don't usually find available for the child set, including a full-on and only slightly scaled-down roller coaster--it had the height and the big drops and the speed and everything. Here's Will and the Dadda ready to ride:

Moment of truth, can you tell? Fortunately, five seconds in she seemed to be doing just fine:

Sydney and I were in the car just in front of them. As soon as the ride was over, I asked her, "Did you like the roller coaster?" "NO!" she replied. Of course, when I asked her again at the end of the day, it turns out that the roller coaster was her favorite ride. Go figure.

Fortunately, there were many mild rides, as well:

And MANY water rides, thank goodness, because otherwise I think the day would have been unbearably hot and full of whines.

And there was active stuff--

--and parades--

--and shows--

--and yummy over-priced theme-driven munchies--

Sydney was way into character hugs, and so she met Oscar the Grouch and Elmo and Zoe and my personal favorite, Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster's costume is the least cumbersome and so, when he saw Sydney coming, he was able to get down on his knees and give her a great, big bear hug. She was thrilled.

Sydney didn't get to meet her own favorite character, but she did catch up with her later at the gift shop, and so they ended up going home together:

Willow completely refused to meet any of the Sesame Street characters, but shrubbery, it turns out, was acceptable:

As for me, I can't tell you how happy I felt when I spotted this sign--

--or when I stopped for a little breather on this particular stoop:

Yep, it was a sunny day.

Museum of Science, Museum of History

I tell you what, if there is anything that we did not see in Boston, it is not for lack of walking fast and changing lines on the T three times and walking fast a little more. We did that town until it was DONE.

Among the doings?

• Duck Tour
• Faneuil House
• New England Aquarium
• Sea Rex
• Mike's Pastry
• Boston Harbor
• Harvard
• Boston Public Garden
• Zakim Bridge
• Old State House

And etc.

I have a love/hate relationship with science museums. I take the girls to a lot of them using our ASTC Passport, and I know what I like, and I know what I do NOT like. I like a low-key museum, not one filled with frenetic activity. I like a museum in which the collections are arranged thematically, not helter-skelter. I like a museum with ample lighting. I like a museum with ample seating. I like a museum that is not loud.

The Exploratorium in San Francisco is my baseline for a science museum that I cannot stand. The girls love it, but it's frenetic, constantly crowded, jam-packed with a new exhibit every few steps, and it's LOUD. The Boston Museum of Science, in contrast, has exellent thematic arrangements and is spacious. It is, however, crowded and loud and doesn't have enough seating. We enjoyed the unusual exhibits, such as the one on nanotechnology--

--and there was a great cheering of cheers and clapping of claps during the amazing electricity show--

--and Uncle Chad hit the girls up with some truly excellent swag in the museum gift shop, but all the same, I far more enjoyed the far quieter, far more peaceful time that we spent the next day at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, also an ASTC Passport member.

While Sydney pulled Uncle Chad by the hand on a whirlwind tour of the museum, and Poppa toured the place with his headphones on, the Willowsaurus and I looked at every single dead stuffed thing, read every single label, in that entire place. From skulls--

--to butterflies--

--we saw it all. We lingered a goodly amount in the prehistory gallery, of course, saying howdy to the 42-foot kronosaurus and the plateosaurus and other awesome and unusual specimens--

--but all the other stuffed critters and skeletons and bony bits were quite engrossing, as well:

I tell you, we did that place until it was done. But then, but THEN, after the museum, eating a picnic lunch on the Harvard campus, the Poppa says to me, "Did you see the meteors?"

NO!!!!!

Turns out there was a whole other half to the museum! On the OTHER side of the gift shop! Which we did not see! With meteors! And gems! and realistic glass flowers!

We might still be there yet.

A Week at the Beach

Our week at the beach house is nearly over. Here's how we spent that precious, precious ocean time:

Time very well spent, I'd say.

Make Way for Ducklings (and Also Little Kids)

When you bring children to Boston, you simply must bring them to the Boston Public Garden, because the Boston Public Garden is where Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack live.

First, you can feed the crusts of your peanut butter and jelly sandwich to the real ducks and ducklings of Boston Public Garden, happily living on and around their own island in the Boston Public Garden Lagoon:

Then, of course, you have to ride the swan boats around the lagoon, although I doubt that you'll find any peanut vendors.

I suggest that you do not attempt to actually retrace Mrs. Mallard's path. It's a dangerous trip--that's why she needed the help of Michael and the other police officers.

I do suggest that you eat a huge ice cream cone, however, then keep walking down the path, and soon you'll come upon a wonderful surprise--Mrs. Mallard and all eight ducklings!

They're a little bigger than life-size, and they don't mind at all if you stand on them--

--or even hop on Mrs. Mallard herself for a brief ride.

After that, feel free to spend the rest of the day as you choose, but after you bring your children back home again for the night, you know what I suggest for a bedtime story...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Wish You Were Here

We're at the beach:

Life is sweet.

New York, 130 Million Years Before the Dinosaurs

That's where we spent the morning.

In my quest to find the nerdiest things for us to do on our vacation, I researched and discovered a little place just south of Buffalo, called the Penn Dixie Paleontological and Outdoor Education Center. It's HELLA hard to find, since its street may be slightly made up and thus doesn't appear on GPS, and nobody answers the phone for you to ask. Fortunately, this one lady in a CVS by the highway lives near Penn Dixie, and she told us how to get there. Thanks, CVS lady!

I was a little worrried that, after spending almost an hour trying to find the place and shelling out almost 30 bucks to get in and rent tools, the place wouldn't be worth it.

Um...it's worth it:

It's WAY worth it:

Most recently, the Penn Dixie site was a mine for shale that was then crushed up and used in cement. Less recently, as in 130 million years before dinosaurs recently, the shale was the bottom of a tropical sea, and many little critters died there and sunk into the mud, which gradually transformed into shale, of which the top was later mined off, rendering what's beneath oh-so-visible to your average fossil hunter.

Shale is more fragile than and erodes more easily than fossils, so you can actually just walk around on this moonscape that is the Penn Dixie site and spy, among the crumbling shale at your feet, fossils wherever you look. They're plentiful--

--if you learn how to see them:

Willow and Sydney had the time of their little lives. Sydney, perhaps because she's so low to the ground already, kept spying and picking up these HUGE fossils--crinoids like the ones we find at home, sure, but also huge horn corals, and brachiopods that look just like clam shells, and pelecypods--and Willow blissfully spent time at one self-proclaimed "dig site" after another, sometimes just running to and fro giddily, not knowing where to go next it was all so exciting:

As for me, I dipped around for a while, but then I found a section of dried creek bed that had a good bit of exposed shale. Shale is so fragile that you can practically peel it up in these thin layers, and if you run out of fault lines to start peeling up at you can just give the shale a little thunk with your hammer and you've instantly got a ton of brand-new fault lines. So I grubbed happily right alongside the babies--

--primarily on the look-out for trilobytes, which I have become obsessed with. I didn't luck out enough to find a whole trilobyte, but I did manage to ease numerous partial trilobyte fossils out of their slate resting grounds.

Thank goodness that it eventually started to pour down rain, because otherwise we would have spent the entire day there at Penn Dixie, Matt growing increasingly crazy with frustration at our lack of getting back on the road. Getting back on the road is Matt's main source of amusement when we travel, and he does not as a rule enjoy anything that might hinder us getting back on the road where we belong. He tolerated with good nature a brief visit to Past and Present, a little fossil shop temptingly near Penn Dixie, and then back on the road we got.

Exclusive! The Photos that Man versus Food Didn't Want You to See!

Yay, Niagara Falls!

It's like a nice walking path with an excellent park on one side of it and an amazing series of waterfalls on the other side. What could be better?

Our only annoyance was that Man v. Food happened to be filming an episode just as we were there, and they kept doing every single thing that we were doing (sightseeing, ticket buying, Maid of the Mist, etc.) at the exact same time that we were doing it. At first, obviously, I was SUPER excited to see the Man v. Food guy--we had cable for a few months last year, and I loved that show, in which the Man v. Food guy goes somewhere cool, sightsees, and then eats a lot of food--and there they were, filming right where we were, and so I was all, "Matt! Take a picture!"

Here's Matt's picture:

In the back you can see the Man versus Food guy checking his mark, and then there's the camera guy and the sound guy, and in the front are these two people who just stand there and act mean to tourists. Just after Matt took that photo, that woman on the left actually walked over to him and told him that he had to stop taking pictures immediately.

Now, Matt's a nice guy, so he was nice and conciliatory, but his stance was the same as my stance would have been if it had been me with the camera getting all redneck up on her instead of being all California cool: it's unfortunate, for her, that she doesn't want us to take photos, because she has no power to stop us. We're American taxpayers in a state park. As Americans, we're according certain freedoms, and pinnacle among these freedoms is the right to take amateur photographs of celebrities. And not even celebrities enjoying Niagara Falls on their downtime with their families, because I wouldn't photograph that, but celebrities actually on the clock being celebrities. Filming not on a closed set, or even inside a barracade, or even near a sign that says "Quiet" or "No photographs," but right smack in the middle of the walking path at Niagara, making use of, if I'm not mistaken, uncredited appearances by the dozens and dozens of random tourists walking by. I think I was one of those tourists, and you didn't hear me being all, "You can't take photos of me," even though I not only don't make a living by having my photo taken, but I don't even like it, because I'm a good sport. You want me to stop taking photos somewhere that I have a legal right to be and a legal right to photograph at, and there's no "No Photography" signs around, and it's Niagara Falls, for Pete's sake, and I paid TEN DOLLARS to be there? Then you have to look like you could arrest me or at least beat me up, and even then I'll throw a big redneck fit and make a huge scene.

In other words--you want me to stop taking pictures? Make me.

Mind you, I wasn't even that interested in taking photographs of the Man v. Food guy--we were at Niagara Falls, you know?--but after that I did make a point of taking (or pretending to take, because it wasn't worth blowing through my CF card) tons of photos every time we were around them, and since we basically did everything together, I basically took photos of the Man v. Food guy for half the day--I might as well be his mom, or maybe I should make him a crazy-fan scrapbook. Mr. Man v. Food guy basically ignored all the tourists that his camerapeople were getting lots of free shots of, which is fine by me because I'm down with keeping your mind on your job, but lots of unhappy tourists were complaining and saying sad things about how the Man v. Food people had been mean to them, so I considered myself doing it for the people.

Everyone needs a hobby.

Otherwise, we had an excellent time, with lots of staring at the falling water--

--and a VERY exciting trip on the Maid of the Mist:

Even the Man v. Food people came with us (and took up a quarter of the boat, and rebuffed excited tourists. I always thought Man v. Food looked really fun, but according to the way these people acted, it is a J.O.B. like anything else--were they missing children's soccer games? Being forced to face their waterfall phobias? Who knows, but they were grumpy):

The Maid of the Mist has an observation deck that is very high and offers grand vistas:

And the chance to get up very, VERY close to the base of waterfalls?

Very, VERY exciting:

Even for the adults, it turns out:

I was, of course, planning to wrap my fancy camera up nice and tight at the last possible minute, but as soon as we so much as turn the corner to the Horseshoe Falls--

--the camera is all, "Is that a hint of moisture that I sense in the air? ABORT! ABORT!"

And it crapped out for the rest of the day and refused to behave until Matt gave in later that day and took it to an actual camera shop. Mind you, all the clerk guy did was futz with it like we'd been doing, and that camera shop didn't even sell Canons so what more could he know than us, but at least it gave my little Rebel the feeling that we cared, and so it recovered.

And that's why instead of hundreds of glorious photoscapes from the observation deck later, instead I have grainy video from my trusty and sturdy ipod!

I know, you're welcome.

Our Priceline hotel in Buffalo ruled pretty well, as well (which is great since we're getting screwed at this Fairfield Inn outside of Albany), with one of our top ten hotel swimming pools EVER:

Seriously, check out that vista!

You bet it was a top-ten day.