Staycation Part One

Since we cannot travel this Spring Break.  I decided to blow the kids' minds with a little Staycation.
Here is how it works.  I planned everything in advance and keep my little plans a secret.  Each day when we wake up all bright eyed I tell the kids what we need to wear and what items we need to load into the car and we get to it.  Once I get my coffee, we pile in the van and I reveal the magic of the day that awaits us.  The boys like surprises so each day is like a little present.

Day 1:  Point Defiance Park.  The park is located at the very North tip of Tacoma.  It is HUGE and absolutely gorgeous.  Shockingly gorgeous.  There are miles and miles of paths through the trees to walk or run along and it bumps right up to the Puget Sound so it also has beaches.  In the summer there are a whole slew of activities going on at the park.  Although some things were still closed, Fort Nisqually, the Zoo and Aquarium and all the trails were open.
Of coarse, the boys wanted to go to the zoo.  I HATE zoos.  But in the spirit of staycationing, we went.  They had fun, I had fun watching them have fun, and I sandwiched the treacherous zoo event with some chill time at the beach.

Here the boys are attempting to skip rocks.  There really was no skipping going on so they just started chucking rocks into the sound.  Works for me.
From where we were plopped on the beach we could see a few of the islands in the sound in the shadows of a snow capped Mount Rainier.  Every once in a while a ferry would cruise by and seagulls would get all excited about a piece of bread. It was a beautiful day.

Day 2:  Started off way too early. Matt's flight departed from Seattle at 6am.  So we all piled in the car at 3:45 and headed to the airport.  We came back and napped a little and then headed out to breakfast.  Plan A didn't work out.  Thank you Lord...I realized before we left for the day that Snoqualmie Falls trails were closed and the only thing open was the viewing platform.  So viewing platforms might be just fine for pretty girls in fancy dresses and pumps, but my boys want to climb around, get sprayed by the water and hopefully fall in some mud.  I panicked, scratched plan A, and headed to IHOP for breakfast and a planning session.  Long story short, the boys decided they wanted an indoor activity instead of an outdoor activity, and they wanted to stay close because they were tired.  Sweet!  So we headed up to the Boeing Museum of Flight in Seattle.
I would like to point out that the next activity that I try to avoid after Zoos, is air museums.  We looked at a lot of airplanes, engines and space stuff.  A sweet museum volunteer gave me a 10 minute lecture on the International Space Station.  Though the information was unsolicited and initially unwanted, it turned out to be quite interesting!  The boys had so much fun.  It is funny to watch them in the museum and see what interests them.

The day ended at the gift shop.  Bringing me to the third thing I avoid: souvenir shopping.  I hate pointless souvenirs and I hate wasting time looking for them.    Gabe immediately found a genuine space suit costume for a million dollars and Eli picked up a NASA lego space station for another million.  I was ready to kill the whole souvenir idea when I found a VH-60 Blackhawk model and was convinced we needed it.  (Matt flew the shiny VH in D.C.)  That sent the kids on a shopping mission and our whole day of laughter and happy came to a screeching halt when Gabe finally declared "I'm just having a rough day".  I looked down to see his eyes overflowing with tears and his little heart broken.  Eli tried to put a mood ring on him to see if the ring could determine exactly what emotion the tears were coming from.  Anger?  Sadness?  Frustration?  Gabe wanted a souvenir and the space suit and the real leather pilot's hat and goggles were all too expensive.  The day was saved when the super nice lady in the shop allowed us to remove a sign from the display case that Gabe thought would work for his room.  Whew.  Crisis averted.

My take-away from the day at Boeing was the words of a Medal of Honor recipient.  Salvatore Giunta earned the award in Afghanistan when he fiercely charged toward Taliban insurgents in an attempt to save the life of a comrade.  He succeeded in rescuing a soldier from the grip, literally, of the Taliban fighters but in that 3 minute attack and firefight, two members of his team died.  In a video taped interview he recounted his feelings when President Obama awarded him the medal. "When the light silk of the medal lay around my neck I felt the weight of the two men who died".  Like most heroes he didn't feel like he earned the award, in fact this award weighed heavily on him as he saw the family members of the men who died in that fight.  He said his actions that day were "just a brush stroke in the painting that was the ambush".  He contends that everyone in that fight was a hero and if he deserved the award, they all did.  
The silk of the award carries the weight of the fallen.
I found the words very powerful.

The ride home was filled with laughter as the boys watched an episode of Tom and Jerry and I plugged along in traffic.  So far, we have staycation success.

Comments

Allison said…
You're the cleverest, most awesome person I know.

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