Gloucester

I am supervising a student who is doing an internship at a museum in Gloucester, so today the whole family took a road trip. They do "family fun days" with programming aimed at young children one Saturday a month, so Joe and Nicholas came along for my visit.

And a good time was had by all. The museum is much bigger and more exciting than it appeared on the website, and today's crafts were aimed exactly at Nicholas' level. So he did crafts (and crafts, and more crafts--I think he did each of the three options twice), I got a tour of the museum from my student, we all walked around the museum looking at cool boats, models of Gloucester at various points in time, and beautiful paintings of boats and ocean scenes. (And Nicholas learned to identify the American flag from the pictures.)

We then walked down to the water to look at the few boats that weren't covered for the winter, had a delightful lunch, and headed home. We have already resolved to go back in the summer, although we're brainstorming ways to get around the shortage of parking spaces that was apparent even on a snowy day in early March.

Since Nicholas fell asleep halfway home, we drove straight to the library, where we had to return a movie that was going to start accumulating dramatic fines beginning tomorrow. Our plan to drop it off and keep moving was thwarted when Nicholas woke up and saw where we were, but that meant we had an unplanned but enjoyable family trip to the library. I got a couple novels I am planning to use as bribery/rewards to convince myself to wake up each morning of Spring Break next week and grade papers. Joe read Nicholas a couple of the BIG books that require lying on the floor. All three of us played a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse letter matching game (because our library is awesome and has tons of cool games). Nicholas got some new Franklin books and a book about dinosaurs playing baseball.

We then did our grocery shopping on the way home, making the day just that much more productive.

All the activity and the short nap made for a very cranky and tired Nicholas, so the evening was not as fun, but he is now in bed, Joe is off running one last errand, and as soon as I write up my report of the museum visit for my student's internship file, I am off for the night.

I love these days!