Well congrats! We were close to home, I was just trying to throw you off the trail We had a few winners! Steph and Ginger. Hats off to Ginger who not only guessed where we were *specifically* by saying round rock/austin (we stayed in RR but spent most of our time in Austin) but specifically named the hotdog joint we fell in love with and lots of the other details I hinted at. Amazing!!!

So yes, we were only in Austin. Its a 2.5 drive from home so an easy trip, for sure. Our day today was much better than yesterday….its amazing what a little relief from the sunburn will do for my mood! ha. We got up bright and early, skipped the hotel breakfast and hit the Einsteins, of course. Then we went to the Zilker Park nature center where we pulled in JUST in time for the school groups to arrive.

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Warning: this will be a rant that inadvertently is very anti-school. If you are offended by such things, you might want to skip!

We really detest the school groups and watching how the teachers (or volunteer parents or whomever) talked to the kids made my stomach turn. It never ceases to amaze me how assholish complete adults can be to small children in the name of “group control”. I am often totally tempted to step them and say “Do you hear yourself? Would you talk to your husband that way?” Today there were such harsh, negative energy that I felt like removing my little ones from the room entirely because it was a little scary! I mean out and out SCREAMING at these LITTLE kids!

And then there was the completely sad way they shuffled the kids through the exhibits so fast that they literally could not have seen, much less learned, a thing. How shameful. Two little boys got lured away by the excitement of an interesting exhibit *one foot* away from his class and they may as well have committed a serious crime, learning and all. I’ve seen some really well managed and cared for groups of kids before but they are the serious exception. Most of the time the kids are treated like cattle and the learning that happens is zilch (which probably is the appeal of the field trip in the first place for the kids! haha).

Anyway we didn’t stay long because the center was small and the other groups were large but we got to see and touch and use some amazing things and ask lots of questions. We stayed long enough for Addison to become totally obsessed with magnifying glasses. They had many and she wanted to use them all! She has always loved cameras, binoculars, etc. but now the magnifying glass is her go-to scientific tool, I guess.

So next up was UT Austin. We drove around campus and will save the walking tour for another visit. It was fun to see the tower and other sites. Then we went to the Memorial Museum on campus which was totally awesome. That was also empty minus one school group (which, incidentally, must have had their parents/volunteers/teachers trained in the same draconian methods because all we heard were lectures on proper behavior, not so much about science). So we got to take our time, Addison willing, and see everything. If you picture my four kids studiously walking from display to display taking it all in, reading the placards, you couldn’t be more wrong! The hardest part of these adventures for me is that my kids get really REALLy excited, they want to see and talk about everything all at once, all different from each other and also different from whatever I’m trying to look at, and three kids all vying for my undivided attention while one baby runs around like a chicken with her head cut off makes me tired pretty fast. But seeing their excitement and hearing them share with me all of their knowledge and wonder is worth the chaos, for sure.

Of course the best part were the dinosaurs. My big kids played a game called “lets see if we can name it without reading the name” and it was a little creepy how well they did. The museum only has dinos from Texas so it was really cool to see so many local creatures. The highlight of the trip was that Noah spotted a Glyptodont shell and that is his favorite dinosaur*. We talked to the on-site paleontologist for way too long, hogging her for ourselves. Noah just had a million questions to get answers to (mostly about the Glyptodont, of course) and so did I. She also gave me some good resources for hooking Dalton up now to help him on his path toward paleontology if he intends to follow that path. For those who guessed Arizona, that was a very good second guess because Northern Arizona University is the only college that I know of that has a dedicated bachelor’s degree in paleontology! But UT has a dedicated vertebrae paleontology lab and they do some really awesome digs. Why all the fuss about colleges? That will be in a blog post this week - stay tuned for me to come totally unraveled.

The night we got to Austin we also went down to the Congress Avenue bridge to see the 1.5 million bats come out for the night. It was super cool. Addison was so excited but totally impatient. She must have asked 100 times in the half hour beforehand where the bats were! She loved it! Even though we talked about what they were doing, afterward when I asked her what bats eat she thought and thought and said “Ice cream”, then offered up “Cheese?”. She cracks me up. Finally I reminded her about the bugs and she always has to add “And ants?” because she HATES ants…I mean HATES! She will not go on steps or anything that have even the most microscopic random ant on it. I can’t imagine that bats eat ants but I let it go - closer than cheese and ice cream! Anyway the bats were cool. I wanted to post these pictures but the first night they would have been a total give away I think! That’s when I took the sunset pictures though.

Can I just tell you that taking pictures of bats at nighttime pretty much exhausts my photographic abilities, ok?

Incidentally Steph said Austin had no zoo and I thought they didn’t. I researched the heck out of Austin before we went to decide on things to do and zoos are always the top of our list, we love them! But not one zoo came up on any of the “things to do” lists, I never once saw a brochure in the hotel lobby or any of the museum lobbies. I had to Google the Austin Zoo after Ginger mentioned that there was one because I just couldn’t believe it! So I stand corrected. Austin does have a zoo, apparently just not a very popular one?! I think it may be more of an animal sanctuary than a zoo. But we’ll have to save that, and the capitol building (oops - no time for that one but will be sure to squeeze it in before November) for the next visit.

So that’s all she wrote! Even though it was only a few days, I’m glad to be home.

*yes I know that a glyptodont is not really a dinosaur, its a prehistoric mammal but I’m generalizing for brevity ok?

**edited to correct that Ginger who guessed where we were was not my aunt but another Ginger! Sorry about that Gingers #1 and 2!!! I blame the horrible internet connection I had in the parking lot of the Days Inn when I read the comments! ha.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Holidays & Vacations, Homeschooling, Nature, Parenting, Photos & Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.