07/19/2012

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm playing catch up today.

Yesterday (Thursday) I was gone all day, so did nothing around the house. I took the day off from work, and we took our nephews (10 year old twins) out for the day. It was a long, tiring day, but was well worth it.

We got up at 5:30 AM, and left home at 6:00. We drove the 80 miles to my Mother-in-Law's house and picked the boys up around 8:00 AM. We took them out for breakfast, then had another 2.5 hour drive to the Gray Fossil Museum, just outside of Johnson City, TN.

The Fossil Museum was a great place to visit. The boys seemed to really enjoy themselves, and Andrea and I enjoyed it as well. It was very educational, and was set up in a way that made it easy to engage the boys in conversation about the things that we were looking at. 

After leaving the museum we stopped for lunch, then took the boys to the Hands On! Regional Museum. I was very disappointed with this part of our trip. While they had some interesting exhibits, there was little, if any, accompanying information. I tried giving the boys some information on the things that I was able to explain, but the place was chaotic, so they learned little, if anything. It seems that this "museum" is aimed much more at entertainment than education. It was certainly more of a playhouse than a museum.

After leaving Hands On! we checked out the local natural foods store, called Natural Foods Market.  Even though we didn't buy anything, Andrea and I both liked the store. If we lived in the area we would certainly shop there. It can't really compare to the Good Foods Market in Lexington, but is comparable, if not a bit better, than Happy Meadows Natural Foods in Berea. One of the most interesting parts of visiting the store was in realizing how strange the store seemed to the boys. They were fascinated by things that seem perfectly ordinary to Andrea and I, such as the sea salt grinders and the peanut butter making machine. Sometimes it is easy to forget how processed and prepared foods are causing people to be so far removed from the actual source of food that kids don't even understand how peanuts become peanut butter.

We made a couple of additional stops before dropping the kids back off around 7:30 PM. That put us getting home around 9:30, to a couple of hungry dogs and a cat who insisted on going out even though it was stormy. I did take time to check email, but not do my daily post. By the time I got in bed I was exhausted.