Sesame Street to Gettysburg

Although the girls had been studying extensively for this and they did enjoy the experience, this last stop was absolutely for me and Matt.

It's a rare thing for us, this ability to do something that we adults want to do, and I'm cherishing the girls' new maturity that's allowing it for us. It's been a LONG time since a kid of mine threw a fit in the modern art museum (although that experience was so traumatic that we have perhaps never been to a modern art museum since). And so, on the last day of our trip, after hotel breakfast and Willow's chess class (you've got to love online classes for vacationing without learning loss!) we drove to Gettysburg, just because Matt and I really, really wanted to see it:

Gettysburg is actually a great place to visit with kids--it's outdoors, so they can do a lot of running around; you pretty much have to drive to the different sites, so they can get a break with air conditioning and a book fairly often; and the monuments are large-scale and eminently climbable:

The first thing that we did was run into the Visitor's Center just to buy a self-guided audio car tour and Guide to Gettysburg Battlefield Monuments: Find Every Monument and Tablet in the Park, and then we spent the next few hours following the tour (which was incredible--tons of context, detailed explanation of what you were looking at everywhere you went, thrilling storytelling with sound effects. It completely made our trip):

The kids LOVED the artillery.

Thanks to Killer Angels, I have a huge soft spot for Buford and Reynolds, and so McPherson Ridge, the first engagement in the battle, was my favorite stop:

I was super sad about Reynolds dying.

Fortunately, the girls love audiobooks, so the audio car tour was the perfect way to see the battlefield: we'd listen to the stories, listen to the orientation at our stop, get out and run around and see stuff, and then climb back into the car to listen to more stories.

Sydney's favorite stop was Oak Ridge; she listened with bated breath to the audio tour's description of brave Sallie, the pet dog of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, and when she learned that there was actually a monument to Sallie on Oak Ridge, I handed her our book of battlefield monuments and told her that we'd stop at it if she could find it, so she did!

Willow really liked best climbing the huge fire tower that allows you to overlook the locations of the second day of fighting. Seriously, there were So. Many. Stairs, but I have really committed myself to a healthier body, and repeating to myself all the way, "This is good, healthy activity!" I climbed those damn stairs (something that I actually don't think I could have done three months, 14 pounds, and four inches ago), and the view from the top...

Was excellent:

Even though my home state was on the wrong side of the war, I did manage a shout-out:

Some of my peeps were apparently also paying their respects there:

Again thanks to Killer Angels, Little Round Top is Matt's favorite spot in the battlefield:

Bayonets fixed, Chamberlain's brave men prepare to charge down the hill!

He has a special place in his heart for Chamberlain, whose story is pretty epic. Also, he helped hold Little Round Top against all this:

The High Water Mark of the Confederacy is also an amazing spot, and yes, my bloodthirsty little soldiers are attempting to cross the line and shoot you:

You can actually hike the fields that the Confederate soldiers charged across, right from the statue of Lee at the center of the Confederate line to the statue of Meade at the center of the Union line. We saved that for another day, however.

We did not finish memorizing the Gettysburg Address in time to recite it at the spot where Lincoln originally read it, alas, so Will read it for us, instead:

We did see the cemetery that he dedicated, at least--

--and the spot where it was read, and the memorial to it--

--so when we finally finish, we'll be able to imagine the appropriate setting for our recitation.

Again, we closed the park down. We had to blow through the museum--

Actual cannonballs fired at Ft. Sumter--very cool context for the girls, since  they've memorized that conflict.

--and zip through the gift shop before they kicked us out at the end of the day.

It had been a long day, through which we had sustained ourselves on peanut butter sandwiches, clementines, granola bars, and tortilla chips, so we celebrated this final stop on our road trip with a late afternoon visit to a restaurant named, of COURSE, General Pickett's Buffet.

It was our last charge, you could say...

The girls and I did a ton of prep work for our trip to Gettysburg. Here are our favorite resources:


Will read most of those independently--she's such an avid reader that it's an easy way to boost her contextual understanding of a topic. We all did the picture books and documentaries together, but for Lincoln, I only had the girls watch the first scene with me, the one in which Lincoln visits the battlefield and hears the soldiers reciting his Gettysburg Address.

You can also check out my Civil War Pinboard for the educational links, resources, coloring pages, memory work cards, timelines, artifact images, etc. that we used. I have a playlist on Spotify for all the music from the Civil War, which the girls LOVED listening to (awkward as it was to have Sydney suddenly bursting out with "Dixie" at random times in public places), as well as a great audio version of the Gettysburg Address that's helping with our memorization, but Spotify won't let me embed it. The good news is that you can search Spotify yourself, for something like "songs of Civil War," and find all the same as me.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Sesame Street

They may be a little old for it this time around, but my girls have been asking if we can go back to Sesame Place ever since the last time we went there.

Yes, the girls have grown up a lot in the three years since our last Sunny Day:

Sesame Place 2010

Sesame Place 2013

Sesame Place 2010

Sesame Place 2013

 Fortunately, none of the magic has worn off, neither from the place nor from my children, and they were just as thrilled to be there on this day as they were on that day back when they still watched Sesame Street for fun and edification:

  
There were benefits to being bigger kids this year. The roller coaster didn't seem so scary anymore to a girl who's illegally ridden Rock 'n Roller Coaster twice in a row--

Do you see Will way in the background? I volunteered to help out a mom with two little kids by riding with one of them, since my big girl was tall enough to ride BY HERSELF!

--and big kids have an even BETTER time on all the climbing equipment and huge wet and dry active play areas:

Matt and I didn't even have to trail them, but could sit and chat and catch up from our week apart!

We did skip some shows in favor of those thrill rides that were even more fun this year, but we  went to others, and yep, they were still magical, too:

My grandpa used to record shows like this and I know for a fact that nobody will ever want to watch it.

Right as the parade was about to begin, and all the parents and their excited small children were crowded around, two women got into a fight right in front of everyone. One woman was screaming at another woman that she'd tried to take her son, and then she started punching her, and then a couple of dads jumped in and separated them, and then the woman SPIT at the other woman. An employee ran to get a security guard, and all the mommies, me included, were trying to block off the kids' view with our bodies. The mom next to me turned to me and said, exasperatedly, "Don't they know that we're at SESAME PLACE?!?" It cracked me up--fistfight in the middle of a huge crowd, I'm trying to figure out how to get the kids out if there's a riot or someone pulls a gun, and the mom next to me is pissed off because this place is SUPPOSED to be appropriate for preschoolers!

Unlike last year, we also didn't leave early--on this trip, we apparently had a habit of staying until closing time everywhere we went. We went on more rides, saw another show, met Cookie Monster and Bert and Ernie and Abby Cadabby and Zoe and Grover et all, floated down the lazy river, zipped down the water slides, rode Elmo's Blast Off, and did everything else there was to be done. Gradually, though, we found ourselves sort of naturally tapering off. First Matt and I decided that we were done with rides, although the kids were still free to go strong (and they did!)--

--and then Willow bought herself a bubble-blowing gun and decided she'd rather run around playing with that, leaving Syd as the last man standing. And that kid had energy! She did the same three water slides over and over and OVER, long after it had gotten dark and too chilly for people to ever want to go on water slides (which means no lines, so yay!). When she was finally done with those, she wanted to ride the swings a couple more times to dry off, and then she wanted to stop and notice every single great thing on the way out and have her picture taken with it:

It felt like suitable revenge for every museum visit she's ever had to accompany us on.

And of course, after the park had closed and we'd finally dragged the kid out of there and gotten her strapped into her seat, I don't think we'd left the parking lot before she was sound asleep, snoring in her booster. Will followed her about a minute later, leaving me and Matt to drive on for another couple of hours in peace.

Next stop: Gettysburg!

New Haven, Connecticut, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

This morning's drive to the Philadelphia airport to pick up Matt had been an ongoing subject of conversation during my entire time in New Haven; Mac and I discussed it plenty, and that one guy in the grocery store check-out line also had some good insight into the matter.

The trouble was that, although my GPS estimated a 3 hour and 40 minute trip, I would be driving straight through the morning commute of what seemed like the entire East Coast, including cutting right past New York City. How much extra to allow for this? One hour? Two? I finally decided on a one hour estimate, because, frankly, it would be easier for Matt to hang out at the airport an extra hour to wait on us than for us to hang out at the airport an extra hour to wait for him.

With that settled, we packed up the car, said goodbye to Mac, secured his promise to mail us all the things that we had surely forgotten under couches and behind bookshelves, and found our spot in the bumper-to-bumper traffic slowly edging its way down the East Coast.

It was by far my most stressful drive, sure, but I kept myself going by thinking, "I'm going to pick up Matt; I'm going to pick up Matt," and at one point Syd said from the backseat, "I like it best when you drive, Momma, because you let us help you look for exit signs!" I do, too. Even though a child has never actually been the one to say to me, "Oh, there's the exit there on the left--half mile!", somehow it makes me *feel* like I'm getting some navigational help when I tell them both to help me look out for it.

But in the end we made it! I didn't rear-end or get rear-ended by anybody, I DID make the wrong turn around New York City that I feared I'd make, but that wrong turn didn't then send me through the streets of Manhattan as I'd feared it would, I did have enough money for all the tolls (we avoided all the turnpikes before and after this one trip, but I was afraid to take the time to detour on this leg), I did figure out where the pick-up for Matt's airline was, and, running more like an hour and a half past the GPS estimate but about ten minutes out from the airport, I did get a call from Matt saying that he was off the plane, headed towards the exit, and could meet me out front in, oh, ten minutes?

And yes, I did pull up to the curb, get out of the drivers's seat, give Matt a hug, and then hop my butt right into the passenger's side. I felt a tiny bit guilty about throwing Matt into the deep end of city traffic right after his early morning flight, but oh, did my neck and shoulder muscles need to de-stress!

So that's how poor Matt, after a short night's sleep, an early morning trek to the airport, and a long plane flight with a layover, found himself driving his family minivan into downtown Philadelphia. I knew that I wanted to see some history, but I hadn't been certain enough of our timeline that day to actually make any reservations, so we only got to see Independence Hall from the outside across the street--

--but the Visitor's Center did have reenactors (Willow flat-out refused to walk up to the patriot and tell him that she was tired of British oppression and wanted to enlist), the most boring film about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution ever made (seriously, it was so boring that it almost cycled back around to interesting, because you kept thinking, "HOW could this movie be so BAD?!?"), and a gift shop, where a certain little girl could continue her stuffed animal acquisition crusade by purchasing a stuffed bald eagle:

We were able, by waiting in line for a bit, to see the Liberty Bell up close:

--and fortunately, there's a lovely, grassy park right next to it, facing Independence Hall across a street closed to most traffic--

--and it was a lovely place to run around, catch up on all the accumulated gossip of a week apart, and, of COURSE, eat Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches:

There's a ton more to do in Philadelphia, of course, but we chose an early night of it, heading to our hotel for a swim, a movie, a take-out dinner, and an early bedtime, because tomorrow--

--we were headed back to Sesame Place!