Rainy Day at the Museum

On Saturday I took the boys to the Tallahassee Museum. It was an interesting choice for the day given the rain was pouring down and the museum is almost exclusively outdoors. Nevertheless we had a great time. They have a school house from the 1850's that black students used to go to. They saw how small the room was and I told them how all the kids from kindergarten to graduating were in the same room. Then I explained segregation in it's simplest terms. Little Man didn't really understand but Beans got mad. "That is wrong. All peoples is the same." I'm so thankful we live in an age where my kids don't even realize the color of people's skin or what's different about them. People are just people.

Next to the school house was an old church with an ancient organ and very old piano. Little Man got up on the stage and gave us a speech. :P They weren't as impressed with the church but Beans thought the old piano was entertaining.

After the buildings we headed for the animals. We saw a bald eagle, owls, white tailed deer, bobcat, black bears, a Florida panther, and the boys' favorite - a river otter. Oh and I better not forget the four separate toads we saw along the way. They were croaking happily in the rain. I have to say it was nice to see all the animals in big, natural enclosures.

Possibly the highlight of the entire day was when they got a chance to pet an indigo snake. It was out with a keeper for it's education encounter. There were very few people at the museum so Little Man and Beans got to spend quite a while petting it and then watched happily as it's caretaker let it crawl through the mulch. Though I questioned my sanity (haha what sanity?) when I decided to follow through with the museum in the rain, I'm so glad I did. The sparsely populated grounds were perfect for easily overstimulated kids, the peacefulness of nature was calming and it was such an enjoyable day.

Today I moved the boys back into the same bedroom. We've done it before but they were horrible at waking each other. Little Man has trouble getting to sleep and Beans has trouble staying asleep so combine the two and you have a whole family with little sleep which means a very cranky mom. Wish us luck and happy sleep and I just may get to move back into my bedroom.

Thanks again to wonderful Grandma J for keeping both boys for *6* hours for me on Friday so I could go to orientation and get registered for my classes. She did a fabulous job with them, both boys had a great time and were so happy when I picked them up. I really appreciate it.