Year 2, Days 13 & 14: Polar Opposites

I would love to say that yesterday was picture perfect when Keturah, Justin and I visited the Indiana State Museum and saw a documentary on whales at their Imax, but it wasn't.  The morning was great with the documentary and then lunch.  It was a cheaper field trip, where the teacher (that's me!) got in free and they validated our parking (a savings of $13!).  The museum itself was very, very quiet.  The homeschool group we went with was just a tiny fraction of the bigger group that goes on all these fields.  I met a few families, but didn't keep up with them through the museum.  This is where it went downhill.  I wanted to slow down and really enjoy the museum since we didn't bring Abishai with us.  I wasn't planning on going back for a while at least.  Well, the kids didn't like that and wanted to keep up with their friends who were going really fast, hardly reading anything.  I was not pleased.  Museums aren't a race.  They don't take the time to set up exhibits and write out information in order for us to say, "Oh, that's nice." and move on.  You need to read and think and ponder.  Sigh.  Then halfway through, they both started getting tummy aches and saying it was because they were walking too much!  Ok, couch potatoes, I'm sorry, but it's a small museum, and you are being ridiculous that the two are related.  They did drink something they hadn't had before, but I also want to teach them perseverance even when they are in pain, because guess what?  It's what I do every single day.  All told, we were on our feet for 3 1/2 hrs.  I was wiped by the time we were done, partly because of their whining.  By the way, it has been a tactic of Keturah's in the past to say that she's full (of food) if she doesn't like something on her plate but then when she offered a treat, she'll gobble it up, indicating she just doesn't like the food in front of her.  I should have stopped and left the museum.  It's just a museum.  It's just money spent to see the museum (I'm not being sarcastic).  It wasn't worth putting all of us through the pain.  I was being selfish.  I should have gone over my expectations in the car beforehand.  I even started out the day with getting out of the house early enough to get them hot chocolates at McDonald's.  Live and learn, once again.

The museum itself was interesting enough.  Not a huge wow, but ok, good enough.  I learned some things.  We got out of the house.  We can say we've been there and done that.  Moving on.

Fast forward to today.  I wake up with vertigo.  Bummers.  At least I know my protocol to handle it, and it worked well.  That's why I'm upright enough to type this evening.  Dramamine to the rescue to take care of the nausea.  It's probably an ear infection again.  So, I laid down as soon as I could after breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I skipped church.  Lay low now so I can get over it and move on to the busy week ahead.  I listened to podcasts and slept.  Jared of course handled the kids well all day.  The middles did some math and reading since we didn't do any bookwork yesterday.  I needed the rest from the long day yesterday, too.  I'm very grateful for keeping up with the housework daily and purposefully putting days of rest in between events so that I don't feel panicked when this happens.  Although, I did ask the question, "Why me again? Why can't I just be healthy for one day!?" No easy answers for that question.  But I have a doctor's visit on Tuesday that might provide some answers.

Tomorrow is a new day, so let's get to bed so we can start it.

A very neat GLOBE that you could change to look like different planets!

The moon, I believe.  It was all evolutionary and millions of years science, but that's ok.

Neptune!

Neat pendulum showing that it's not swinging back and forth in a straight line, but in a circular motion bit by bit because of our position on the globe.  It would go around in a perfect 360 degrees every 24 hrs if we were on the north or south poles.  It would swing just straight back and forth on the equator.  Here at 39 degrees latitude, it will go 240 degrees in 24 hrs, so it takes 40 hrs to go all the way around knocking down the pegs.  I loved it and so did the kids!

Choo-choos!

Woolly mammoth!  They had a cool exhibit where they showed how archaeolgists prepare a site and carefully mark each artifact by where they found it, etc.  I tried to get Justin to slow down to see it, because he wants to be a paleontologist some day.

How heavy are you compared to animals that do or used to live in Indiana?  Justin is as big as a big beaver!

With all of us on there, we got up to the next animal.

Cave bug!

Our trusty lunch bag that the Wagars gave us over 5 years ago!

Neat artwork made entirely of old CD's and DVD's!  Complete with holes that make it look like it goes on forever!

African American exhibit, complete with a chapel.  They told Indiana's part in the abolition of slavery up through the civil rights movement.

A replica of school #5?  Not sure what's the story behind this because the exhibit looked closed.

Abraham Lincoln lived for a little bit in Indiana, so here we have a cabin like he would have lived in.  Plus actual furniture his dad had made.

And, a very special artifact!  Abraham Lincoln used this mallet to drive pegs into boards, but only after he had repurposed it from a long handled axe!  Abraham Lincoln touched that!

How long and how hard is it to make butter?  Very hard!  Actually, it took just a few minutes and I KNOW it takes a lot longer than that in real life.

Keturah did it, too, and it was a lot of work!  This area was about the 1700's and 1800's in Indiana.

Played a short game of traveling to a farmstead in Indiana from Kentucky.  You needed to pick out the right provisions and make a few choices.  Kind of like the Oregon Trail game but very, very small scale.

Lots of fun artifacts like this two person vacuum cleaner!

Lots of things are/were manufactored in Indiana, the crossroads of America.  Like the earliest version of the coke bottle!

They had items you could buy from the Sears catalogue and even had the catalogues they came from!  Like this very sophisticated washing machine!

Indiana is famous for it's limestone that has been shipped around the country and used in many famous buildings, including all of these that are etched into the side of a huge piece of limestone.

Here are just some of the things Indiana limestone has been a part of.

Benaiah loves the rubik's cube right now.  They had displays set up according to historic time period, so this was in the 80's and 90's section.

LOTS of famous people, especially actors and singers, were born in Indiana.  People like James Dean and the guy who drew Garfield's comic book strip.  And these actors and actresses in the picture, too.

I think I've played with one of these type of TV's when I was a kid! RCA has a big manufacturing plant here in Indiana.  Lots of fun technology came from there over the years.

There are three levels to the museum, so here we are up at the top.

Part of the exhibit of 200 objects representing 200 years of Indiana history.  Indiana has been it's own state for 200 years now.  This is where I had to speed up my wandering.and reading.  Ku Klux Klan was big here.

An original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation with an authentic signature of Abraham Lincoln!  Wow, again, he touched that document!  Cool!

Well, I guess I'll save some of the pictures I took on my phone because, surprise, technology isn't working.  And I'm fading.  Good night!

P.S. Oh yeah, almost forgot.  Abishai nursed for almost 1 hr this morning!  What gives?!  I thought we were on our way to being done.  Then he nursed again after his nap for longer than normal.  One month until he's 2 years old!  I think I will need to force the full weaning on him at some point because I don't think he's going to give it up on his own.  But we have started this new routine of him and I sitting in our nursing chair and doing a few fingerplays together and reading some books, including his Bible together.  He loves the stories with animals and the one with Abraham, Sarah, and baby Isaac. He asks for "baby" all the time.  It's a board book type Bible, so there's only a few stories and they are short.  But he loves it.  So, hopefully, the new routine will ease the transition.  He asks for "more" meaning "milk" and does try to zipper down my sweatshirt, so he knows what he wants and how to get it.  It's great in one way, but a little creepy in another.  But he's the last baby, so I'll take it.