Fun Day

Today was the day to celebrate Charlie’s birthday!

It’s a bit early, but we work it around days when there isn’t school.

This is fall break, so it’s perfect.

When Charlie arrived at my house he asked about my “Remembering” list. He added the names of his Oma and Opa Claassen and his Oma Enns.

Then we sat down and made our list of possibilities for the day.

Usually we both throw out ideas and then make our choices based on how much time we have and which things seem like the most fun.

For Charlie, Osage Nature Trail was the highest priority.

He’d brought his disc along for disc golf, but Chuck (the disc golfer in this house) only had a short time to play golf with Charlie before he had to go plant wheat. So that's how we started...5 minutes of disc golf with Papa while I packed Chuck's lunch to take along on the tractor.

On to Osage Nature Trail.

Charlie wanted to get lost and then find our way back to the car. The only way that could happen is if I said nothing at all about which paths to take. So Charlie took the lead and I made no suggestions until Charlie indicated he was ready to find the car and go home.

We walked for over an hour having fun guessing where each turn might take us and noticing the beauty around us.

We got back to the car just before lunch time. Chuck was well into planting his wheat field by then so Charlie got a half hour ride on the tractor before we headed out to find some double arches.

We decided to head toward Wichita and to find a McDonald’s on the way, so that we could get to the Museum of World Treasures sooner. Charlie enjoyed the food AND the play area.

On to the Museum of World Treasures

The museum is impressive from the outside. It has two floors of exhibits, and we began with prehistoric fossils, especially dinosaurs.

This tyrannosaurus rex was found in South Dakota! Charlie was pretty excited about that!

Charlie was not too interested in the rest of the ancient history and we cruised through those artifacts pretty quickly.

Then we began the larger exhibits. There was a lot on the Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War. Charlie was interested in a few of the things in these exhibits...the models of airplanes and boats, and a few of the weapons.

I have to admit that I’m worn down by depressing news feeds lately, and when I realized how much of the museum was about oppression and war, I did not mind at all that Charlie set a quick pace through the exhibits.

We got home sooner than we expected to, so even though this morning we had crossed out the movie option, we ended up having time to see Kung Fu Panda. Then it was time for snack and outdoor play.

Running through the back yard with the dog was how we spent most of our time, but Charlie became interested in breaking down a rotting stump. He worked quite a while at figuring out how to wear away the weaker parts of the stump.

Then we moved into the house for some time with art. Charlie wanted to use markers, so we both spent some time doing that.

and then taking silly selfies.

And that was our day.

After I took him home I got online and made a photo book for him to remember all the things we did.

I bought one for me as well.