Tuesday, May 20, 2008

SACRAMENTO FOR A DAY
SPRING BREAK

Warning: This could be a formatting nightmare, but I lack the patience to work that out.

And so, Sacramento. This was our first trip there, the day I testified. You can see the excitement.

I made sure Dane and Aubrey worked their energy out first. Here they are doing jumping jacks in the capitol's hallowed halls.

They were terrific during the hearing. (We were in there an hour before I spoke.) We came armed with pages of homemade stapled books, where each page had something bizarre on it, like "Chipmunks Ice Skating," "A Goat Wearing sweatpants and sweatbands," "A Turtle Climbing a Tree," and "A Dog Drinking a Latte and Driving a Car" and then the kids had to read and draw the image. The pictures turned out really cool and I've saved the books.

Of course, we stopped in front of the Governor's office, which the public had officially changed to read: Governor Schwarzenegger - even though no other governor's individual name had ever been displayed.

After the hearing, we had a per diem from Children Now for $10 each. Mick looked up a "reputable" coffee joint before we left, so we hung out (literally, see photos) for a while eating good sandwiches and drinking tasty drinks.

With our bellies full, we walked to Old Sacramento (Old Sac). Between walking from our parked van to the capitol, from the capitol to the coffee joint, and then into Old Sac and finally back to the van, we probably put in a good 5 miles. Sometimes that was a bit of a stretch but it all felt like part of the adventure. The kids made up this (repetitive) song "Oooold Sac-ra-men-to," which they were even singing as they fell asleep on the drive home.

Old Sac began with a stop at a donut shop - which meant we stopped there again the second trip to Old Sac (in late April for the media event) because it's now "what we do."

After that, we checked out the Pony Express tribute (see photo statue) and the kids were surprised that the mail ever traveled without a motorized vehicle, and that there weren't roads. Come to think of it, I have a hard time grasping that concept, too.

The kids liked the replica of an old one-room schoolhouse.

We spent a fair amount of time playing school - looking through the primers, writing on slates, pumping at the water pump.


We saved the big train museum for our next visit.





1 comment:

Anonymous said...

LOTS OF LEARNING GOING ON IN OOOOOLD
SACRAMENTO!!!! Wonderful. I've never been there myself.
See you SOON!
Lovingly,
Grammy