Field trip wars

Topsy Techie and Firefly Mom have been participating in dueling field trips. Now, I have no beautiful pictures for you, partly because, try not to fall out of your chair, my beloved DSLR is in the shop. I have been using the iPhone camera and it leaves much to be desired (do you hear that Apple, add a DSLR app, will ya? There’s no app for that). So, I have for field trip #1 some decidedly on the bad side of so-so pictures and for field trip #2 some I’m not even posting, why did I bother, what is that? pictures.

On Monday, we went to one of James’ most beloved places – Legoland. And honestly, I didn’t take pictures of most of it. Want to see what it looks like? Here’s a link. If you happen to live in Southern California, or if you’re visiting in the non-summer season and are a homeschooler, sign up here for a coupon for you and 5 of your family members to get in for $21 each ($25 if you wish to go to the aquarium) plus $12 parking. You can download an educational guide and attend classes, depending on the age of your child (an honest moment, we have never gotten there early enough for the classes but I’m sure they are great). Legoland is really best for the under 10 crowd and is not at all set up for a mom and two toddlers (no rides can be ridden by three people, even if two of them are small).

What I did take pictures of is the aquarium; we hadn’t been before, although I think it’s been open for about a year. It’s a small aquarium, but for $4 a person, it was well worth it. James was given a card that had multiple choice scratch offs on it, about 10 questions to find the answers through the aquarium. It would be, and was, fun exactly once.

There were lots of bubbles like this one:

You would think they made good photo opportunities. I can’t really comment (see above about my real camera), but there was glare. They were fun though, a quite interactive aquarium, without lots of touching (some, but not a lot). Keep in mind, it’s very small. If you are paying whatever extravagant price they normally charge, I’m quite certain it’s not worth it. I feel this way about Legoland in general. It’s outrageously expensive to get in if you don’t have some sort of discount (I just checked  – $65 for an adult, $55 for a child  without the aquarium - Yikes!).

O.k., field trip #2, another favorite place, and one that we will likely get to at least once more before the end of the year Discovery Science Center . My mom gave us passes for Christmas last year (we had passes two years ago as well). The best part about this science center is every month they have new exhibits, so every time we go, we’re seeing something new. We went Friday night for a member event (Halloween based, Spooky Science/ Dia de los Muertos) and James won first place in the costume contest. Yes, I know Ami, you want a picture. I am determined to get something decent on or before Halloween. The only problem with the museum is how busy it is. I always feel lucky when we get there and have some space. I rarely go in the summer – craziness! Except for summer, I’ve tried to go once a month when we have the passes, so we can catch the changing of the exhibits. I plan to go in early December to see the Gingerbread one, a favorite and call it a year well spent. Thanks, mom!

Next week, we have two more field trips planned, neither ones we have done before. Hopefully, I’ll get some good pictures. Stay tuned!