J and I dropped W off at school early today for his trip. We were on the way back home when I asked her what she felt like doing. She said How 'bout the Hall of Science? It was a bit too "spur of the moment" for me, but I said Hey, why not? So we got there at 10am - before the school crowds. We started on the lower level and ended up having our own "guy". He was one of the guides and followed us to each exhibit explaining things about how this works and why that happens when you do this. Even when the school kids started coming, it was still fairly empty. We watched a cow's eye dissection demo and a chemistry demo. J answered almost all the questions they asked and I feel she learned so much there today. Her favorite exhibits were the heat sensor shadows and the tons of stuff on microbes. We ate a quick lunch in the cafeteria and left around 1:00 to pick up W. J had the best time, she said. I was debating whether or not to give J's friend, G, a call to come along, but it turned out better that we were by ourselves today. J got to go wherever and do whatever she wanted for hours, and really paid attention to what was going on. The schooled kids were being shuffled and rushed from one exhibit to the other and getting yelled at to stay with their partner. One poor girl got to an exhibit late and the teacher told her everyone's done now so you don't get a turn now. UGH! I loved that J was free to wander about spending as much time as she wanted at each exhibit, going back to the ones she really liked, and choosing to excuse herself from the boring laser demo. It was wonderful and definitely motivated me to get out to more places like that!

It turned out W's trip was cancelled and the kids ended up having snacks and watching movies in the auditorium all day. Jeez. I would have brought him with us if I knew that's what they'd be doing all damn day. He said he had fun anyway.

J had company technique class at 4:30. While she was in there, W was asleep in the car and I brought along some costume sewing to do. The tap number has them wearing suspenders that I had to tack to pieces of elastic. An hour later W woke up, we went into the dance studio to watch the class and hang out with the other kids and moms (after grabbing his Gameboy from the car and buying him a bag of peanuts). I really love being there. I have never met so many great people in one place in my life.

Link of the day:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6529/notebook/grtf.html