I am seriously suffering from cabin fever. You know it's bad when a morning having your teeth cleaned sounds relaxing. When the dental hygienist started sharpening her medieval torture devices, I laughed (she apologized). Yep, I needed to get out of the house.
I took the four older kids back to 1850 for a rainy day without heat or flushing toilets. Which doesn't sound too different from 2011, but at least we drove to get there!
I think the kids are suffering too. Most public school kids have only been out of school for 1 1/2 weeks. They are just starting to enter crazy land. We've been off for a month. We are past crazy. S was so excited when we got to Fort Nisqually. "I've never seen a real barrel in my life! Are there real pirates inside?"
At the "sale shop," the shopkeeper encouraged me to buy some dress goods so I could get my girls out of boys trousers (he also embarrassed IJ about wearing shorts-the only shorts back then were underpants). He also showed us many furs and taught us exactly how to treat and shape them to get the most money for them. Then we headed out to the tower. They kept good and busy pretending to defend the fort against invaders. Since the park was empty, I just sat on the stairs and stared at the rain. It was awesome.
Then it was out the kid's outpost to play games...the same games we have at home...
And then we headed into the "special exhibit" which was so uninteresting to kids that S was amazed at this light switch. "I've never seen five light switches together at one time!" I liked the old dress display. IJ liked the hand made canoe-even though it was made in the 1930's by a college student and not by a Native American.
In the living quarters, F pretended to be Sleeping Beauty. And in the "necessary," S pretended to...
...he didn't really know what a necessary was. IJ did.
This was such a fun field trip. It was the exact same field trip I took in 4th or 5th grade. It was more fun today because no one else was there and my kids kept making me laugh. "Look! Another barrel!" Earlier this year, IJ and I read
Diary of and Early American Boy. Seeing the tools the book described was cool. IJ remembered the names of many of them. I'll have to take them back if they ever have a blacksmith day.
