Teenager-Friendly Wholesome Family Activities: Hunt a Killer

Do y'all have any weird, low-impact parenting things that you nevertheless feel a ton of constant guilt about?

Mine is the fact that I don't really like playing games.

Like, I played games with the kids all the time when they were little, and did the whole Family Game Night thing semi-regularly. Late night games are part of our New Year's Eve tradition, etc. But in those cases, playing the game is mostly about playing the game WITH THE KIDS, or, you know, AS A FAMILY. I wouldn't necessarily choose to play any given game if it wasn't a #wholesomefamilyactivity. 

I mean, I'd rather be reading?

So we don't really play games unless I feel like it's one of those super special #wholesomefamilyactivity moments, and I constantly feel guilty about this. 

Will and Matt are pretty amiable about games and like to play them, but Syd has, I think, a similar game mindset. 

And yet, she found a game that we're obsessed with.

Syd and I are both into true crime shows--although to be honest the Intro to Serial Killers class that Syd is currently taking at the local community college might have broken us of this. It's... a lot of graphic details. Like, a LOT. And there's, like, a huge list of paraphilias whose definitions Syd was tested on and so now I can't get them out of my head.

Did you know that there's a whole thing involving somebody wanting somebody else to... you know what? You're probably better of not knowing.

ANYWAY, because we both like true crime shows (although maybe not as much now as we used to...), Syd gave me this Hunt a Killer game for Mother's Day. 

It was already the perfect Mother's Day gift, because it was an activity that we could do together. Syd is particularly good at the Mother's Day version of #wholesomefamilyactivity. 

But even better? The game is SO GOOD!

You play the role of a baby detective trying to solve their first crime. You're given the set up and circumstances and all the evidence, although some evidence is locked or password-protected and some evidence isn't evident that it's evidence and some evidence is unclear because the suspects used ciphers or other ways to conceal it. And some isn't even evidence, but stuff that might be evidence. 

So you're given all that, and then you just... solve the crime! In this particular game, Syd and I had to figure out if a beloved bar owner's death was murder or an accident, and if it was murder, who did it? How and why?

Syd and I made a whole evening out of it. We bought ourselves snacks and drinks and set up at the big family room table, and exiled Matt and Will elsewhere so that they didn't get any spoilers that would ruin the fun when they want to try the game.

We'd kind of thought that the game would only take an hour or so, because it's apparently one of the easiest in the entire Hunt a Killer collection, but, ummm... I think it took us nearly four hours to solve? And the whole time we were completely absorbed, absentmindedly eating Goldfish crackers (these giant Cheddar Jalapeno ones are the best) and figuring out clues and having stunning revelations and arguing over alibis and trying out different substitution ciphers and having an absolute ball.

Ooh, and there were awesome surprises! At one point I figured that just for a laugh I would Do a Thing and Syd was all, "OMG don't Do That Thing! Surely it's not a real thing, just a game thing, or if it is a real thing it's a different real thing and it will be so embarrassing!" But then, I Did the Thing and it WAS a real thing AND it was a game thing and Syd and I were shocked and delighted and I screamed out loud because I'm excitable and we're still talking about it. 

We LOVED it. It was SO FUN. 

The only downside to the game is that there's zero replay value because, you know, we solved the crime! But if you consider it a #wholesomefamilyactivity rather than a product, the spendiness is easier to bear, in the same way that I happily spend more on theater or concert tickets. And at some point Syd and I will successfully convince Matt and Will to play it (and then secretly time them so we can decide whether or not they're better detectives than us, but only tell them that we timed them if we win, of course), so that's double the value, and then if I get really lucky, maybe somebody on Craigslist has a different Hunt a Killer game and would be willing to trade. 

Or, I don't know... y'all got any mysteries that I can solve? I prefer mysteries with lots of interesting clues, a few ciphers, and zero paraphilias or horrifyingly traumatic details of graphic murders. My birthday is in August!

A Very Girl Scout Graduation

 

From that Christmas morning almost ten years ago to this day of her Bridging and Girl Scout graduation, this kid has loved everything about being a Girl Scout. 

As we've journeyed down this Girl Scout path together, I've celebrated her milestones--

--felt pride in her accomplishments--

--watched her become ever more confident and comfortable with herself--

--and continued, always, to celebrate every milestone--

--through this latest, which saw her Bridge, in the eyes of Girl Scouts, from a girl to an adult:

We had a fun family gathering in the backyard for our Girl Scout troop's Bridging and Graduation celebration. The kids created their own Scouts' Own Bridging ceremony, and all the adults (and the dog) had to do was watch and applaud:

Each kid stepped up on the makeshift bridge and spoke some words about her time at her current level. Some kids talked about their accomplishments, some about their favorite badges, some about their favorite memories. Then each kid stepped down on the other side and greeted her sister Scouts with the Girl Scout Handshake. Afterwards, the troop recited the Girl Scout Promise and ended with the Friendship Circle, and as sweetly and simply as that, Will's final Bridging concluded.

And then we had a party! 

Kid-led often means being led in strange directions, and that's how somehow or other, we ended up having a Make Your Own Fishbowl Punch bar at our celebration. The troop budget could not afford the glow-in-the-dark ice cubes that the kids wanted because they are REALLY expensive, but everything else was just as planned--a selection of Nerds and/or berries for gravel, plenty of ice, a combination of Sprite or ginger ale plus blue Minute Maid or Hawaiian Punch, and Swedish fish and gummy worms on top. Add a paper straw, and you have perfection!

Before sunset, I taught the kids how to make a basic rolled beeswax candle. It's a bit of a jump start on our upcoming retired Folk Arts IPP meeting, but the kids needed to have candles in hand for our final evening activity, and what better candle than a candle that you've made yourself?

I also made each of the kids a special drawstring bag to hold their candle, on account of we're going to infuse these candles with meaning and only light them on the fanciest of occasions:

Is there anything that decade-old stash felt cannot do?!?

The labels are fabric sheets that are printable on an inkjet printer, also part of my stash for who knows how long. I LOATHE my inkjet printer, but I have to admit that the specialty papers available for it are the best. The ribbon is a silk ribbon that I bought once upon a time, but couldn't use for the project I'd had in mind for it because of those unfinished edges. I don't even know when I dyed it, but I'm sure it was some leftover dye bath or other that I popped it into, and I love the color.

There should be a word for the particular thrill of making a lovely present entirely from stuff one already owns. It's free AND it declutters your house!

Matt impulse-bought sparklers for all the kids while out and about running some pre-party errands. I don't think it would have ever occurred to me to buy a billion sparklers for the troop, but OMG a billion sparklers was just exactly what these kids needed. 

From now on, sparklers are probably going to need to be present at every evening Girl Scout meeting. They were THAT fun. 

When it was dark enough, Matt set up the projector and we screened the slideshow that the kids and I created from photos spanning all the years of our troop. OMG these big kids used to be so small! Did I know that at the time, that those small kids would grow up? I definitely didn't, or I would have cherished them even harder than I think I already did.

After our slideshow, Girl Scouts and guests gathered in a circle for an Eternal Flame ceremony in honor of our two graduating Girl Scouts. The Girl Scouts had their own handmade candles, and I passed my stash candles around to the guests. I asked each person, when their candle was lit, to share something with our graduating Girl Scouts. I suggested that they could tell their favorite memory of that Girl Scout, congratulate them, talk about something they liked about them, or offer hopes for their futures. I had expected it to be fairly short and sweet, with a lot of "Congratulations, Willow!", etc.

But you guys. Every person, even with an impromptu speaking role thrust upon them, was so thoughtful, and so sincere. I loved that for my graduating Girl Scouts, watching them receive these loving words from friends and family. I loved the chance to see my own wonderful girl through the eyes of people important to us, to hear what they love about her, their favorite memories of her, and how they feel about her. I loved that she got to hear that from them. 

The past few weeks, as Will and I have been trying to work out a suitable way to mark her high school graduation, I've been coming back a lot to something that I wrote back in 2014, when Matt, the kids, and I took a weekend trip to Arkansas to attend my baby cousin's high school graduation. It was the kids' first graduation ceremony, and they had a lot of questions. At some point during that long ceremony, the kids and I spun a tale of what their own high school graduations might look like:

"Sitting in the stands for three FREAKING HOURS for this graduation, the kids and I did some discussing of what their high school graduations might look like. We're thinking backyard party, perhaps we'll grill, some of the people who've loved them and guided them through their school years can give speeches, and they can give a speech, too."

I forgot about that for years--forgot about it for most of this year, too, to be honest. And then when we were trying to figure out what we might do to honor Will's graduation--a party? A ceremony? A cake? A speech? A cap and gown? A diploma?--none of it really felt like it fit. 

But on this night, we had a backyard party. We didn't grill, exactly, but we did roast marshmallows over the bonfire.

Some of the people who've loved Will and guided her through her school years gave speeches, and Will gave a speech, too. 

We did it, my friends. We graduated.

Homeschool High School Civics: In Which "Attend a Protest Together" is Checked Off My Parenting Bucket List

Vaxxed and boosted? It's time to protest!

Remember that time that I happened upon an abortion rights march happening downtown and I got so excited that I literally hopped out of the car right then and joined them in my sweaty gym clothes?

Since then, I've been keeping my eye out for ways to volunteer, and other protests that I can join--with a little more advanced notice this time, ideally!

And by "advanced notice," I suppose that I meant 3 hours, because that's the approximate amount of time ahead of this particular protest that I announced to my homeschool that "Hey, there's an abortion rights rally at the courthouse this afternoon. Anyone wanna go with me?"

One kid did, and that's how our afternoon turned into a place-based, experiential, project-oriented homeschool civics lesson!

The lesson consisted of the following parts:

1. Research the history of protest signage, and examples of current signage related to Black Lives Matter, gun control, and abortion rights.
2. Create original protest signage, featuring an original, sincere message, while listening to my favorite Angry Feminist playlist on Spotify.
3. Attend a protest and collect observations about the experience. Discuss both the personal experience and the social-historical context of the event. 
4. Afterwards (because you didn't have time before!), read the full text of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Discuss.

I was a little nervous about Part 3 because, you know, you want to bring your kid to a rally, not a riot, but fortunately, our town is a liberal haven in the middle of our red state where we actually have very little state/national representation of our actual desires because our precinct has been so gerrymandered, so attending an abortion rights march here is a pretty safe bet.

There were absolutely a few sketchy incidents that happened. During one of them, the local university's newspaper literally quoted my kid and I snarking about how much gas a particular truck must have been wasting as it continually circled the courthouse and shouted at us through some kind of speaker system--they spelled our names correctly and everything, and got me word-for-word holding up a protest sign about abortion rights while fervently exclaiming, "And gas is so expensive right now!" Another online news source later published a photo of that truck's driver leaning out of his truck and spitting on a protestor, which... gross. But, you know, there's my kid and I, using our platform to grouse about the price of gasoline!

The price of gasoline is an absolute scam, though.

Mostly, though, the rally and march were lovely. Everyone was super nice and supportive, an awesome woman gave out adorable little hanger SWAPS that we pinned on our shirts, and the weather was gorgeous, giving me an excuse to run through some Handmaid's Tale dialogue with my kid:

"We've been sent good weather."

"Which I receive with joy."

OT, but I've been watching The Handmaid's Tale in 30-minute increments during my cardio at the gym five days a week, and while I'm currently at the beginning of Season 4 and still riveted (so no spoilers, please!), it's a LOT less fun now that it's turned into a documentary. Two nights ago, I had an actual Handmaid's Tale-themed nightmare. Now I kind of want to DIY some Handmaid cosplay to wear to my next march, though.

The kid and I also had a ton of fun holding up our signs to the street--

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--and every supportive honk was a shot of endorphin. It was SUPER fun. And dang, an event like this would have meant everything to me when I was my kid's age.

 Might as well go home, then, and make myself mad with Part 4: Read the full text of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. 

Okay, here are screenshots of the quotes that make me the maddest:

Originalist interpretations of the Constitution make me SO mad, especially with an issue related to sex/gender or race. Yeah, no shit that the right to autonomy over one's reproductive choices wasn't mentioned in the Constitution! The Constitution was written by men! The only rights "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" are the rights of the white male landowner, and every time the Supreme Court decides to dial down its decisions to that sole perspective, it's actually just dialing it down to the perspective of a rich cisgender white man. 

It's the same thing here:

If women weren't writing the Constitution, they sure as hell weren't writing the laws, either. They sure as hell weren't voting for or against anything, either. 

Oh, and that 1879 law they quote up there? Yeah, the last witch trial in the United States took place in 1878. You cannot use historic laws to determine what was just or desired in regards to a group of people not given agency or suffrage. Like, gee, there weren't laws back then that addressed a woman's body autonomy? That took into account a woman's potential desire not to carry a pregnancy? Wow, that's some real revelatory news you're breaking there.

And notice that the 1879 law that's quoted doesn't refer to the woman as an actor in the scenario, or the decisions that she might make for her own body, because it doesn't imagine her as someone with agency. If you want to figure out some kind of historical precedent, you'd have to figure out how actual women felt about their pregnancies, what choices they'd wanted to make, what choices they did make in secret, or just between themselves and their peers. And you can't figure that out, because it's not codified, it's not written down, and even at the time how many people would have known about it, on account of it wasn't that many people's business?

Justification using historical laws just doesn't make sense when women didn't have political agency at the time that the laws were written.

Somehow, although the Supreme Court completely ignored that fact while writing the justification, they decided that it's a great reason why returning the decision-making to the states is a super idea right now:

As a matter of fact, I do NOT find that noteworthy, and I think it's a patronizing statement to make, as if the Supreme Court doesn't know perfectly well how extremely many districts are gerrymandered. It's a running joke in my town that "our" Representative, Trey Hollingsworth, never has to step foot here, much less--gasp!--campaign here, or address any of our needs, or take into account any of our requests, because our district is gerrymandered to such an extent that no matter how poorly he does in our city, the rest of the district will carry him. Our Representative was more often a Democrat once upon a time, but the 2010 redistricting transferred enough reliably Republican areas over, and Republicans have won ever since.

Republicans don't usually even bother running in our tiny little State Representative district; instead, they used the latest redistricting to further isolate us, and peel off some Republican areas from the edges to add to other districts to make them more reliably Republican. So sure, we've got a Democrat, but there's only 29 of them in the entire House, and next week the 71 Republicans in that House are going to vote to outlaw abortion in Indiana.

So yeah, good luck voting! 

Let's not let that be the result of today's Civics lesson, though, at least not for the kid. The kid needs to walk away from her first protest feeling empowered, not defeated. She needs to focus on the energy of her fellow protestors, not the nastiness of those trying to disrupt us. She needs to feel like her voice is heard and her opinions are valued, even though she's losing some of her precious human rights.

Instead, then, let's let the kid's Civics lesson be a little piece of dog Latin also from the Handmaid's Tale:

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, Friends!

Cooking with Teenagers: Whole Fruit Strawberry Lemonade

 

This whole fruit strawberry lemonade has too much sweetener to be health food, but I declare that the whole fruit makes up for it, and it's so delightful and refreshing and yum--WAY better than powdered lemonade mix!

The kids and I have been making this strawberry lemonade together since they were small and I found the recipe online. I used to make the recipe as-written, including leaving the lemons unpeeled. We prefer to wing it now, so the lemonade is a little different every time. It's better to wing it, anyway, because lemons are always different sizes and strawberries are always sweeter or less sweet than the last time, so the amount of sugar required is always going to be different. And I don't usually buy organic, so I do prefer to peel the lemons. Anyway, putting lemon peels down the garbage disposal makes the kitchen smell awesome!

The one fancy piece of equipment that you might need is one of those super-powerful blenders. I bought a refurbished Vitamix a billion years ago (or at least a decade ago, which is the exact same thing), and it's still the best thing in my kitchen. The only thing I've ever had to do for it is replace the pitcher after I, myself, dropped the lid plug into the blender while it was running and cracked the pitcher and tomato soup flew EVERYWHERE.

So I don't know if you exactly *need* the world's best blender to make this recipe, but I've only ever used the world's best blender to make it, so your mileage may vary, as the kids say.

This recipe that the kids and I use makes one completely full blender pitcher of lemonade.

You'll need:

• 2-4 fresh lemons, depending on their size. 
• around a quart of fresh strawberries, tops removed. Sometimes I'll cap these fresh, put them in a quart-sized plastic baggie in the freezer, and pull them out to use frozen.
• sugar to taste. If I'm in charge of the sugar, I'll use more like .5-.75 cup. If a kid is in charge, they inevitably dump in a full cup of sugar without even tasting the lemonade first.
• water.

The goal is to fill the blender pitcher maybe halfway full with fruit, at least half of that lemons. Peel the lemons, but otherwise just toss the whole fruit into the blender:

Strawberries, as well, should be capped, but otherwise just throw them in.

Next, add water to just below the maximum fill line of the blender.

If I'm making the lemonade, I'll blend it, then taste it, then add sugar and blend again until I like the taste. The kids don't even bother--they dump in a full cup of sugar along with the fruit.

Blend the lemonade on high to pulverize the fruit:

There are also lemon seeds in there that you'll be pulverizing, which is why you might need a high-power blender. Even on the days when we've not done such a thorough job and we've been left with a seed bit or two in our drinks, though, I've never heard the kids protest, and they can be picky about fruit.

Blending the drink at such a high speed makes it a little foamy. You can skim that off or politely ignore it:

Pour the lemonade into a Mason jar filled with ice, add a glass straw, and enjoy your summer day!

I keep meaning to try this recipe with fruits other than strawberries--I think cherries or blackberries would be absolutely delicious--but strawberries are so bountiful right now that I've never gotten around to it. We do have a bit of a watermelon problem going on at the moment, though--why is it that every time I buy a watermelon, the kids eat themselves sick on it as soon as it's cut, and then I essentially have to force-feed them the rest of it before it goes bad? And then a week later they're asking for watermelon again? 

So maybe my next experiment will be to make Whole Fruit Strawberry Watermelon Lemonade? I wonder if it would taste good with boba?

Homeschool Art History: Frida Kahlo and Political Art

 

Art history isn't something that has its own curriculum on the kids' homeschool high school transcripts. Instead, at least so far, it's something that we've done as unit studies, and then I've incorporated those studies into whatever syllabus best fits it. For Will, all of her high school art studies, both hands-on and history/appreciation activities, are included as a 1-credit Fine Arts class on her transcript, and the syllabus includes details of each activity and resources used, written after the fact based on what was actually accomplished.

Syd will have numerous Fine Arts classes on her high school transcript, and it's my hope that one of them will, indeed, be Art History, although for that to be a credit that stands on its own we'll have to conduct a more thorough, extensive study at some point.

Until then, we study the art that interests the kids, as it catches their interest. And recently, that was Frida Kahlo, inspired by the Mexico study that was, itself, inspired by our Girl Scout troop's Spring Break cruise.

As we often do when we start a completely new unit of study, we started our Frida Kahlo unit with a selection of picture books. You know that expression--"Explain it to me like I'm five?" Picture books are meant to offer digestible explanations in an appealing manner, often exploring a topic through a unique lens meant to engage and inspire.

Both of these books were excellent introductions to the basics of Kahlo's life and works:

• Portrait of an Artist: Frida Kahlo
• Frida Kahlo and the Bravest Girl in the World

I've been trying to relearn some of my Spanish this year, so the kids also let me read to them from this awesome book:

• Frida Kahlo y Sus Animalitos

So many animal names to look up and learn! Clearly, my college Spanish classes focused on the wrong things...

Part of the work for this study was creating activities to teach younger Girl Scouts about Frida Kahlo for our Girl Scout troop's World Thinking Day kit, so the kids chose their favorite Frida Kahlo paintings, and I used Google Image searches to find and download high-quality jpegs of them and printed them two to a page on cardstock. I try to remember to do this with all the images we study, whether they're paintings, photos, sculpture, or whatever. They come in endlessly handy for comparison and review, they make your Timeline game even bigger and better, and it's awesome how often they come in handy to build context in a different study. 

And because every good Girl Scout activity includes a craft, the kids of COURSE had to test out these Frida Kahlo paper dolls:

Beyond the picture books and paper dolls, the kids and I LOVED this American Experience documentary on Frida Kahlo:

It's a surprisingly exciting ride, with shocking moments, plot twists, stunning revelations, and a strong female lead! And it answers the question of Was Frida Kahlo The Most Epic Person To Ever Have Lived? with a resounding...

OMG yes. Hard yes. All. The. Yes.

Once we were all devoted Frida Kahlo fangirls, I wanted the kids to have some practice analyzing her art. We'd also been talking separately about different methods of political protest, from flipping off the people who harass visitors to our local Planned Parenthood to participating in a march to support abortion rights, etc., so it seemed like a good chance to use Frida Kahlo as an example of how gender affects political speech, the kinds of political issues relevant to gender issues, and how personal speech can conflate with political speech to empower both.

We did a similar study of political speech in racial justice a couple of years ago, so this unit also builds upon that one.

For this study, we focused more overtly on the definition of political art, and examples of the main types of political art:

I borrowed heavily from the PBS LearningMedia lesson on The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo for this, including borrowing the second page of this student handout for the kids to use to organize their work. 

For their culminating project in this study, I assigned the kids each a selection of Kahlo pieces, and other pieces like Shepard Fairey's Obama graphic, Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, a mural that's locally infamous for including a KKK cross burning, and that lost Diego Rivera mural, and asked the kids to thoughtfully categorize each piece as personal or a specific type of political, justifying their conclusions with evidence. I wouldn't necessarily say that I agreed with all of their categorizations, but they did back up their claims with evidence!

If we'd wanted to carry this study further, the kids could have used that worksheet as the basis for any number of essays, or they could have created their own personal-as-political self portraits or political art of any category. We might do some political art, anyway, as the kids have expressed interest in coming with me to the next Bans Off Our Bodies Block Party, and obviously they can't go without excellent protest signs!

I was happy, though, for the kids to simply accomplish my main learning objectives for them: 1) to fall in love with Frida Kahlo, and 2) to widen their understanding of how we, particularly as women, can express ourselves politically in this patriarchal culture. 

Ooh, how awesome would a Frida Kahlo-themed protest sign be?!? 

Back to the Children's Museum, 25 Months Later

Here the kids and I are at Kindergarten Day in March 2020:

And here's the next time that we stepped back into our favorite museum: Kindergarten Day, April 2022!

I've missed volunteering at the museum so much! And even better that it was a Kindergarten Day that finally brought us back, because Kindergarten Day is the MOST fun to volunteer for. It's even more fun than Chemistry Day, because even though the Chemistry Day activity is usually more interesting, it also usually results in us getting lemon juice or maple syrup or something horrifying all over ourselves. Space Day is also really fun, but Kindergarten Day is something special. The little kids are always absolutely enchanted by our simple activities, enthusiastic and easy to work with, and this year's kids were even more thrilled because, thanks to the pandemic hitting when they were all three or four years old, many of them had never been on a field trip before. Like, ever. 

Can you remember your very first field trip? I can. I was also in kindergarten, and my class went to the Arklahoma State Fair to see the animal barns. In the chicken barn there was a chick pen, and in the chick pen was a little ferris wheel in constant slow motion. There was chick feed in each seat, so the chicks would walk themselves in and start pecking away, oblivious to the ferris wheel carrying them up and around.

It remains in the Top Ten Best Things I've Ever Seen.

At one point during this Kindergarten Day, the kids and I were busily making little carousel animal models with the kindergartners. They could choose a cardstock animal in a few different colors and write their name on the back, then decorate their animal as they wished. Next, we demonstrated to each kid how to tear off a piece of Scotch tape, and each kid got to choose a paper straw and tape their animal to it, using tape they'd torn off all by themselves. Finally, they got a paper cone with the tip cut off, decorated it, as well, and inserted the straw into the hole to stand up their carousel animal. If they didn't run off immediately, we'd play carousel animals for a while, using our important directional words of "up," "down," and "around" while acting it out with the kids. 

So I was busily doing this with about three little kids, and one of them said, "Why are we making carousel horses, anyway?"

I said, "Because here in the Children's Museum, we have a real carousel."

The kids were all "WHAT?!?" with big eyes, so I said, "Look over there," and pointed into the adjacent gallery, where the big carousel was going, music blaring, kids riding all the animals, looking like a literal kindergartner's dream come true.

I'm not in charge of anyone's memories, but I sure hope that there are three or so little kids in particular who will carry with them the memory of their very first field trip, when they got to make a little carousel animal to play with and then they turned around and there was a real, live carousel right behind them.

I think my own kids had fun, too. Here's Syd's carousel horse on a cone that a kindergartner decorated for her:

An adult who was chaperoning kindergartners pointed at this horse and asked Syd if she'd made it. Syd said yes, and the adult was all, "Oh. Are you left-handed?"

It was so random, so inexplicable, and yet so clearly meant as an insult that it's pretty much the most hilarious thing that I've ever seen happen. We obviously carefully saved Left-Handed Horse and brought her home, and now she holds a place of honor in our home, as does Will's Asgardian Steed:

Nobody said a peep about the craftsmanship of Will's horse, nor seemed to notice that it has eight legs.

Afterwards, the kids and I had a brand-new gallery to visit. Since our last trip to the museum, Dinosphere had closed for a year, been revamped with new fossils, and had just opened back up a few weeks ago.

Not gonna lie, I was a little nervous about the Dinosphere revamp. A few years ago, the museum did the same thing to ScienceWorks, and they took out the construction site where you could move real-looking rubber rocks (something like these, but even better) around while riding in pedal-operated bulldozers AND the crawl-through earthworm tunnel system. The giant water table with a lock-and-dam setup and an Archimedes screw that they put in is pretty cool, but nothing else compares to the cool factor of a literal bulldozer you can ride in and operate yourself, and literal rubber rocks that you can pile up and toss around and shovel.

Thank goodness Dinosphere is even more epic after its remodel.

There's new signage--

--and they moved Supercroc to a different location--

--so that its spot could be taken by Sauropods!!!

The T-Rexes and Triceratops are still there, thank goodness:

But now there are whole new sections with new fossils--

--new activities--

--and a beautiful tribute to a museum paleontologist we knew and loved:

So that's what I'd been most excited to revisit. Will, though, has a different favorite thing in the museum, and she was ecstatic to reunite with it:

She's not leaving for college until January, so hopefully they'll have some more quality time together before she goes. 

On a different evening, Will and I headed back to the museum after hours for their volunteer appreciation party. We had to leave Syd behind, because she's a very busy teenager with a part-time job these days, but as a bonus, we got to bring Matt with us!

And the party was 70s-themed, so I sewed us all bell bottoms:

The party was 70s-themed because of the museum's new Scooby-Doo exhibit, so along with our feasting--

--and festivities--

That's us very much NOT winning the pub quiz.

--we got to explore the new exhibit:

The interactive bits are always cute to explore, even if they're designed for small kids. The setup is basically that of an escape room designed for young children, and I think that sounds like just about the funnest thing ever:

My favorite part, though, was the collection of artifacts and original prints, most of which are on loan from Warner Bros.:

This is the original drawing for the original cartoon!

And then a special treat--another visit to Dinosphere, even better without the crowds!

It was fun to have Matt there, because instead of leaving him alone to explore, we could pester him and march him over to all our best places and tell him super interesting stories like "over here is where we ran a fossil activity one time seven years ago but the table next to us where kids could excavate chocolate chips out of cookies was better."

This is my favorite fossil in the new gallery:

It's a MOSASAUR!!!!!!!

Will remains partial to the Sauropods:

I really like that this is one of the magical places of my children's childhood that we haven't had to give up as they've grown. We no longer visit the local playgrounds every day, nor do we make a point to visit a hands-on museum everywhere we travel. The last time that we went into the library playroom, I didn't notice that it was the last time. It's lost to me just like the last time I nursed each child, or carried her on my hip. 

But this museum has kept a place for us even as the kids have aged, welcoming them as young visitors, then as young volunteers, and now as nearly-grown volunteers. But at the same time as Syd's volunteer ID has become nearly unrecognizable as her, since she's gotten so big since she sat for its photo, this museum has kept the magic of its galleries, always offering something splendid and fascinating to the kids even as they've grown and their interests have changed. I hope that this museum, the wonder of exploration, the thrill of trying something new, the beauty of coming back to the familiar, is a type of magic that they never have to grow out of.