Field Trip to Austin

There are about 16 elementary schools in our school district. It is a tradition for the 4th graders at these schools to go to a camp called Sky Ranch for three days sometime during the year. All the kids look forward to going to this place so they can rock climb, do zip lines, go on horse back rides etc.

Well unfortunately, someone with higher power in our school (I'm not mentioning any names, OK, it was the principal, we have issues with her already, but I won't go into all that) decided for some unknown reason that our elementary school would be the only one that wouldn't participate. So this left many disappointed 4th graders and many disappointed parents wondering what they would get to do in place of Sky Ranch.

They decided on a trip to our state's capital, Austin.

The teachers all did their best to find a good replacement for the Sky Ranch trip and I think they did the best they could, but it was no Sky Ranch.

Anyway, having said that, we tried to make the best of the 4th grade field trip.

We rode on a charter bus 3 1/2 hours each way to get to Austin. Waking up at 5:15 wasn't on the top of Joshua's fun things list, but he was still excited. They entertained the kids by playing games about Texas, like Jeopardy and BINGO, they had word finds, and puzzles too. These things worked pretty well to distract the kids actually.

They could earn Texas tokens to enter in a drawing at the end of the day by answering questions correctly or staying on task etc. Joshua was actually 1 of 16 kids who won 3 inch frisbees in the drawing, wowee.

We toured part of the state capital. We got to see where both the Senate and the House of Representative meet while they are in session (which they are right now), and we saw some nice paintings and statues.

Just so everyone knows, Texans (I am not including myself in this category, although I really love Texas and the people here) do everything bigger and better (maybe that is debatable, but they do everything bigger anyway) than other places. Texans are a very proud people (in the nicest sense of the word) and like to let everyone know that they believe they are the best. At one point in their history, they wanted to become a separate nation unto themselves. I'm pretty sure that most native Texans believe that happened and that they are their own little country down here.

So as I looked around the capital it was apparent they are proud of their heritage (which they should be) but I was amazed at it really. Just as some trivia, did you all know the Texas capital building is 14 feet higher (or was it 14 inches) than the nation's capital(see what I mean by "bigger" than everyone else)? And they put the name "TEXAS" on literally everything you see (even their chandeliers). I was actually quite impressed with it all, but it was a bit silly.

Here are the senate chambers. It was impressive in person.

Here is a picture of the rotunda (notice the star with the name TEXAS around it).

One of the many TEXAS chandeliers.

One of the many TEXAS floor decorations.

After the tour of the capital, we had some pizza (one of the highlights, oh it was yummy). Then we went to the Texas state history museum. We could only take one picture, of the floor.

It was interesting... for some people. Actually Josh found it quite interesting. I found it quite interesting. The other 120 4th graders....not so much. For three hours we filled out booklets answering questions about the displays. The kids did good for about the first 1 1/2 hours but they were tired and just didn't have it in them to learn any more about history.

So when we entered the busses at 4:30, they were ready to get home. We even got to watch the original "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" which Josh has never seen.

Finally, I am posting this picture Josh took of me while I was talking to Jason at lunch time. Joshua absolutely loves this picture and made me promise to post it. So here it is.