Blanton Museum of Art

Many people think homeschoolers just stay at home and read books all day, and in all fairness, sometimes we do, but usually we're out exploring!  Field trips and impromptu museum or zoo visits abound.  In January, we met up with one of our homeschool groups for a tour of the Blanton Museum of Art down by the UT campus.  I love this museum, the displays are well-rounded and it's big, but not TOO big.  It's just perfect for school-aged kids to explore.  On this day, we split up into two groups, Bigs and Littles.  I was stationed with the Littles, so you won't be seeing very many pics of the boy in this post!

Ainsley and one of her best friends, Joaquin paired up for the tour.

 They really enjoyed the modern art room!  They were both quite sure this was a lemon!

Then it was time to check out a strange piece called "Missao/Missoes [How to Build Cathedrals]" by Cildo Meireles.  It is made up of over 600,000 pennies, 200 suspended cattle bones and a column of communion wafers through the middle.  Although the depth of the piece is pretty much lost on 5 y.o.'s, they were quite impressed with all the shiny coins and the black drapery around it.

While waiting for the Bigs to finish their tour, Ainsley and Joaquin decided to build a castle in the activity room.

They made a great team and the castle was MARVELOUS!  ;)

After the tour, I packed up the kids and headed over to P. Terry's for a burger.  We had planned on seeing the "Architects of Air" display at the Long Center, but as luck would have it, the line was 3 HOURS long!  There is NOTHING on the planet that is worth standing in line with a recalcitrant 5 y.o. for 3 hours!  There were a few tears shed, so I scrambled to salvage the day.  Peter Pan Putt Putt and life was good!  Then we made our way over to Zilker Park for a train ride and a sno-cone!  Hey, it's all about flexibility!

 And a nice view from the train of downtown Austin.

 A day in the life of a homeschooling family!  And can I just say, Texas winters RULE!

"Philosophers"

We spent one morning at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden for a field trip and afterwards headed to Zilker for picnic and playing.  Toward the end of the day, we ventured over and got some sno-cones and as always had to stop to climb on their favorite sculpture "Philosophers".  I couldn't resist this shot!

An Afternoon at the Botanical Garden

Those of you that follow both of my blogs, you already know that we spent an afternoon at the Zilker Botanical Garden a couple of weeks ago where we came across a certain special critter that Texans love!  Well, I thought you might like to see some of the other things that the garden has to offer.

We actually ended up at the botanical garden because Miss Ainsley is now enrolled in a Scottish Country Dancing class.  Sadly, this class is on the opposite side of the universe from us, so I am having to pack the kids up 2 hours early, just to beat traffic.  Therefore, we are now frequenting many of the local parks and shopping centers in the area.  Which has actually turned out to be a lot of fun for us!

The drought has been so bad here and flowers of any sort have been few and far between, so it was nice to visit the garden and see some color!  And what is an outing without taking loads of pics!  This is what you are greeted with at the entrance of the gardens!

 The children showed me how much they love each other...

and there were still some irises in bloom (at least I think this is a type of iris)!

I love these two so much!

There were still a few roses in bloom.

Ian found a little water snake (that kid is one helluva a spotter)!

We explored the Japanese Garden.

The kids found a perfect spot to just "hang out"!

There were bridges to be climbed,

strange butterfly chairs to sit in,

more beautiful flowers to look at,

and yes, armadillos!

Seriously.  Could one ask for a better way to blow a couple of hours?  I think not.  :)

Nature Nights-Spider Crawl

The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center offers a monthly talk designed for families called Nature Nights.  Sadly, we missed the one in September, but Ian made sure we went to this one as it was all about SPIDERS!  Since the festivities start at 6pm on a Friday night, we opted to leave the house just after 4pm to beat traffic, turns out it was good we did as there was a stalled bus on the freeway that REALLY screwed stuff up!  But we made it early enough to walk around the grounds and enjoy the scenery.  Linda and her friend Deborah from Clovis tagged along and this was the first time for either of them to visit the Wildflower Center.  One of the first things Ainsley found was a HUGE wind chime!  She really loved the sound it made!

There was a new sculpture there, an "Ode to the Cathedral of Junk".  The Cathedral of Junk was a huge piece of folk art by a local artist named Vince Hanneman.  He had it in his yard, it was massive and from what I understand very cool.  The entire sculpture was made from, well, junk.  Sadly, I was never able to see it because a City of Austin ordinance closed him down and made him disassemble the piece.  I am sad that I never had the chance to see one of those major "Keep Austin Weird" things!  And what a shame for the city, who flaunts that catch-phrase, to be the ones to close its doors.  Because really, what is weirder than a huge sculpture of bicycle parts, old CDs, birdcages and weather vanes?!?

Nana, Deborah and the kids enjoying the garden!

We of course saw flowers AND butterflies!

After a quick bite to eat at the cafe, the kids and I went on a scavenger hunt then headed inside for arts and crafts.  I have recently discovered that my beautiful girl could give a good, hairy, rat's butt about hiking and exploring the wild.  Give her paints, markers, glue and scissors and she is in heaven!  So while she continued enjoying arts and crafts with a cute little boy that loved her, Ian and I went with Spider Joe and the rest of our group to look for spiders at night, because you know that Ian and I are ALL about spiders!  Mostly we found wolf spiders and crab spiders and an odd orb weaver here and there.  We were looking for pirate spiders but alas, they were elusive!  We saw some beautiful lacewings and a strange type of red and black beetle.  We also found out that if you put a flashlight up next to your head and shine it on the ground (at least in the woods around the Hill Country) and look out about 8-10 ft. you will see little glistening bits of sand, which are really the eyes of wolf spiders!!  How freakin' cool is that?!?  On our way back to collect Nana, Deborah and Ainsley, we stopped to ogle at a LARGE yellow garden spider enjoying some sort of tasty morsel in her web.  Sadly, the pics didn't turn out well.  Before we left I managed to snap one more shot of my cute kids and one of Ainsley with next to the fountain under the lights.

It was a great night and we had LOADS of fun!  The weather couldn't have been any nicer, the scenery was amazing and the company was awesome!  We could have done without the mosquitos!  Now on a side note, as we were driving out of the parking lot, a small animal ran in front of us.  At first Ian and I thought it was a gray fox, but then I saw the TAIL!  Black and white striped and long and fluffy!  It was a Ring-tailed Cat!!!!  I could not even believe it!  I quickly pulled over and Linda and I got the kids out and I scrambled for the camera, which was being persnickety because the light was low and I didn't have my flash connected, so no photos!  :(  But we saw it run up a small tree and we observed it for a couple of minutes.  It was absolutely the most beautiful, little thing I have ever seen!  I have always known this particular little beastie was native to the area, but I also know they are endangered and EXTREMELY rare, so I had always assumed that I'd never see one in the wild.  Well, I guess I can check another thing off my list!  Woo-hoo!

Blue Bell Ice Creamery

Today we traveled to Brenham, TX where 7 homeschool families converged upon the Blue Bell Ice Creamery!
It was a beautiful day, maybe a little rainy at times! We arrived early enough to grab a bite of lunch, then meet up with our friends. We took the short tour through the factory, which I have to say, wasn't nearly as interesting as I had hoped. There were a few cool things to see, but really it was a bunch of silver vats, pipes and containers ALL with lids. We did get to see how they fill the cartons and how things get packaged for shipping. We saw them make the little individual serving cups AND the ice cream sandwiches, but that was about all we saw of actual ice cream preparation and packaging. After the tour, we were all treated to a scoop of ice cream! Ainsley and I each had Rocky Road since it was with almond and NOT walnut and Ian went for the Rainbow Sherbet. Here is a pic of the group. You'll notice that no one responded to the whole, "Move closer together so I can get you all in the shot!" statement! But that's homeschoolers for you! We don't like lines! ;)
And of course, here is the Piggy with her two best friends Axel and Harper! Can you really get much cuter? I think not.
It was a nice time with friends and on the way home, while Ainsley slept, I had the rare opportunity to spend time listening to music and talking with Ian! Can I just say that my son is one amazingly cool kid! And as we turned off Hwy 290 onto Parmer Lane, Ainsley woke up and we were rewarded with this...
What a great way to end our trip!

A day at the Mayborn!

I've heard for quite some time that Waco boasts a rather unique little museum, The Mayborn. It's run by Baylor University and is supposedly a big deal for the 12 and under crowd. Well, I was bored, the kids were bored and we wanted something fun to do that DID NOT involve melting in the summer heat! Then I read that the Mayborn was hosting a Lego exhibit. Well that did it, we were almost obligated to go at that point! So I called Nana and we made a plan, lunch at Buzzard Billy's (thanks Nana!)

We sat out on the deck overlooking the river, the kids fed the ducks and turtles and cooed over the wild kitties that hung out at the back door hoping for some fish scraps! I have a feeling those kitties had it made!

Then it was off to the Mayborn for an afternoon of fun! We were greeted by a knight in shining armor!
There was a labyrinth...
And a DRAGON!
Ainsley had some quality time building her own little castle with Nana.
After we had our fill of Legos, it was time to see what else the Mayborn had to offer. There was a natural history room where we saw a variety of stuffed critters, a mammoth skull, a humpback whale skull (which sadly was a huge item in a small room and I couldn't get the entire thing in the frame, so I didn't bother with a pic). Then we happened upon the mammoth dig!
This exhibit is a plaster casting that was made from the remains found at the Waco Mammoth site, which is another place that we need to visit in Waco. The kids really liked this room. I don't know if it was the huge skeletons or the fact that they felt weird walking on a see-through surface!

Outside of the natural history section we were greeted by this amazing castle that was made entirely from Dr. Pepper products (in honor of the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, yet another Waco destination that we must visit!) The castle name cracked me up!

The whole museum was really geared toward kids. There was a water and bubble room, a wind room, an electricity room, a music room, a human body room, a tea room, a weather room. The weather room cracked me up as it had a green screen that the kids could stand in front of and do the weather report. So here is Mr. Ian doing the evening forecast!
There were trains, tools, critters, you name it, it was awesome! The last room we visited was the "world room" where there were clothes and tools and maps from all different parts of the world. Here's my Piggy doing her best Little China Girl impression...
And here is Mr. Ian sporting what I assume to be a Tibetan monk's robe, but all I could think was, "The force is strong with this one, Obi Wan!" ;)
We finished off our museum experience in the gift shop. I LOVE museum gift shops, such a wonderful selection of interesting toys that aren't the typical plastic Wal-Mart quality crap! Wonderful books with great pics, beautiful stuffed animals, science experiments, coloring books, I could spend hours in the gift shop! We ended up with some Chinese yo-yo's and Rocket Balloons! I can tell you that those Rocket Balloons were the best $6 I've spent in a long time! They come with a pump and these long, crazy balloons. You blow them up and let them go and they fly all over the house making terribly rude noises which of course causes much mayhem and hilarity! So I give them a serious 2-thumbs up!

We ended our day grabbing a refreshing beverage at Sonic and hitting the road to get home to a little squirt dog! Great day, great museum, great family time!