Spring Break Adventures

Oh the joy of Spring Break. You can tell that it is getting to be the end of the school year, the kids are getting antsy and ready for a break from school. This year Tyler & Kaelyn's spring break fell late in the year. When they go back to school next week they will only have three (yes I said three) weeks of school left. All right, on to the adventures of the first part of our spring break (the second part will come in a later post). After Church on Sunday we went to the vacation condo that my in-laws have. On Monday we visited the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Tampa. We purposefully did not tell the kids where we were going until we started out on Monday, (if we say anything about where we are going or what we are going to be doing they drive us crazy with all kinds of questions or complaining about something we have planned) they thought we were going to be taking them to a theme park with all kinds of rides, to which we continued to tell them "no that is not what we have planned". When we did tell them where we were headed to Tyler says, "I figured when you said we weren't going to a theme park that we must be going somewhere educational." I asked him if he was upset that we were going to MOSI instead and he replied, "No, I like museums."

When we got to the MOSI we paid our fee to tour the museum, (the four of us got in for the price of one adult to go to a theme park) which included touring the museum, the IMAX theatre film, the planetarium show, and the Kids In Charge area (a hands on area for kids to explore, really neat). Anyway, back to arriving, after paying our admission one of the first things we saw was this LEGO display, now for those of you who don't know my Tyler, he absolutely loves LEGO'S. He has several big rubber maid containers full of LEGO'S. Tyler loves to build and wants to be an engineer when he gets older.

One of the areas we visited was called Diasterville. This was a part of the museum that showed how weather affects our surroundings. There was a room that you could go into that resembled a basement and there were TV screens that showed the outside of a home and what happens when a tornado is coming through. We went in there and let me just tell you, I have never personally experienced being in an area when a tornado came through and I don't ever want to either. The sounds were what I imagine would be so real like. There was a place where you could sit a computer and make up your own disaster story in a newspaper, and you could also be a weather forecaster. I didn't get any on those things on camera, (my battery died in the camera). We were able to get pictures of us as community helpers in diasterville.

Kaelyn, myself and Tyler

Chuck, Kaelyn & Tyler

Next we moved on over towards the Kids In Charge area. There was just so much hands on stuff for us to do there. We all had a good time in this area.

The planetarium show was really neat. There was a short video on the mission to Saturn and then we got to see what Monday nights sky would look like. Monday night we were able to look up into the night sky and see the stars that were pointed out to us earlier in the day. If you have never really looked at the stars at night, I encourage you to go out on a clear dark night and do some star gazing. What a beautiful master piece that God has designed for our viewing pleasure. There is no way that we would ever be able to count all the stars in the sky but God knows everyone of them, he put each on into place.

On Tuesday we took the kids down to the pool and we all went swimming until lunch time. After lunch we went down to the boat ramp just past the beach and unloaded the kayak's. We went kayaking and were able to see about a dozen dolphins swimming and playing with one another. As Kaelyn and I were paddling our kayak, Chuck asked me if I saw the manatee, of course I missed it. Apparently we paddled right past it and didn't even notice it. We did do some fishing, however it was not a successful fishing trip. We caught absolutely nothing. It was so nice out there, the water was so calm and peaceful there were very few clouds in the sky. Then all of the sudden the wind kicked up and the waves came upon us, let me tell you it is not an easy task to paddle and get where you want to go to when the wind and waves are pushing you the other way. We finally got to an area where Chuck could get out of his & Tyler's kayak and he was able to walk and pull both kayak's to an area where we were able to start paddling again and got our kayaks to shore. It was a little scary but there is nothing like a good adventure. Sorry I have no pictures of the kayak trip, you know water and my camera don't go to good together.

I will have another post in a few days of the rest of our spring break adventures.