A Fun Florida Weekend & Luke's First Fieldtrip

As I mentioned in my last post, we finally went to the beach! We met up with Marta and Frank in Melbourne. The high was in the mid-60s, so we did not anticipate the kids would go in the water. Everyone wore pants and sweatshirts and it was a little cool at the beach, but not too bad. Everyone wanted to put their feet in the water. After that, no one stayed dried. Luke was completely soaked. The rest of us got wet to varying degrees. I learned that no matter what time of year we visit the beach, we should bring a change of clothes. But, we had so much fun! We brought all our sand toys and the adults sat on the beach and enjoyed the sound of the crashing waves while the kids built fun creations. The girls also collected shells that they are going to use to make crafts. We walked along with Frank, who unfortunately did not find anything with his metal detector and had lunch at a restaurant on the beach. In all, we stayed for about 4 hours. We could have stayed longer, but it did eventually start to feel a little chilly. And, we had our next event to go to--the neighborhood fall party.

The party was nice, they had bouncy houses and a catered dinner. There was a hay ride and a clown/dog show. The kids had fun, and I enjoyed getting a free meal.

Sunday, we visited Fort Christmas. It was nice to see a little bit of history. It has a collection of houses from the 1800s and early 1900s. It also had a little school house that was in use from  1906-1969. They had some written stories from the schools attendees and it was cute and interesting. The Fort was originally built in 1837 by the United States Army. But, the current building was recreated in 1977.  The fort was a supply fort used during a war against the Seminole Indians and was used for less than a year. But, it was really neat to see and we enjoyed being outside and exploring. The area was free and also had a playground and pavilion.

This was my only picture, inside the one-room school. Luke read us a "Dick and Jane" book.

From there, the kids had their first visit to a Steak and Shake. We all enjoyed the Seasonal Shakes (White Chocolate and Peppermint). The weekend was proclaimed a great success!

The week itself was just okay. Except for Tuesday. Tuesday, I got to go with Luke on his first ever field trip! We went to the Orlando Science Center. It was overall very fun. They had a good parent/student ratio, so I was only in charge of Luke and one other boy. Both were very well-behaved and cooperative. The only problem was there wasn't enough time to explore. We got there and watched a show about electricity. Then, we had about 10 minutes in a dinosaur area, then it was time for lunch. After lunch, we watched a one-hour documentary in their dome theater about the moon landing. It was full of actual video and was interesting, however, it was an hour. And, these were kindergartners. But, most did very well. Following the movie, we had about 15 minutes in another play area and then another 10 in the final play area. It was structured by the museum and I wish they had tailored it a bit better to the 5/6 year old crowd. But, all the kids still had a lot of fun and Luke proclaimed it "awesome." We will definitely have to go back and explore a little more. I was super glad that I got to experience his first field trip!

This was a fun one, they had a camera and life-sized dinosaurs would "walk" right next to you. It was interesting to see scale.