Just one more thing

Here's a cool video I've been wanting to share with you guys. It's from our trip to Waco. We visited a science and history museum that had an awesome bubble room. I would have shared this in one of my previous 253 posts about Waco, but I couldn't figure out how to embed into a blog post.

Today I finally figured it out. Go me!!




Morgan in bubble from Leigh Williams on Vimeo.

Snapshots of a Saturday: Wrapping Up Waco

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I'd love to have you join my new photo meme! Here's the rules (they're easy, I promise!):

*Any photos you post must be your own.

*Nothing vulgar or obscene, please.

*Mr. Linky will go live late Friday night and you'll have as long as you like to post your link.

*Try to post pictures of your Saturday adventures, but if you have another day you'd rather share, feel free.

*The photos don't have to be from the same day you post. They can be a recent adventure, or something from long ago.

*No subject is too mundane. If you'd like to share, we want to enjoy!

*Please link back to LOTHF by grabbing the header from above. Thanks!

That's about it. I hope this will inspire us to take our cameras EVERYWHERE (well, almost) in case of spontaneous adventure.

I'm a little late in posting this but here, finally, are the last photos from our trip to Waco. These are from the Mayborn Museum at Baylor University. It has lots of neat Texas history artifacts and also a fun hands-on science museum as well.

The thing I was most fascinated with was the Mammoth Site. Now this is a reproduction of the actual site, which is not open to the public yet. The floor was a glass grid with all the fossils underneath. Very cool!

Our favorite part of the science museum was the bubble room.

I've really enjoyed sharing our trip with y'all! Thanks for coming along!

Let's get back to Waco, shall we?

So, we've had a few days off from Waco. We've had sickness and recovery. We've had school, work, and sleep. You know...all those things that just get in the way of blogging. Haha!

I left y'all at the zoo. I hope you were able to find your way home from there. I've never been at the zoo after dark, but I think it could be rather creepy, don't you?

The day we were at the zoo was HOT. Like over 100 degrees hot. We sweated buckets and really just wanted to experience some air conditioning for the next 2 months or so. Ron wasn't able to come on our expedition to the Dr Pepper Museum the day before so he missed out on the soda fountain DP. That seemed the perfect place to cool off and take a short rest. He got a large DP float and declared it "pretty good." I had a A&W Root Beer this time, and man, oh man, it was absolutely the best root beer I've ever had. I'm spoiled for life now.

Not wanting to sit around like sloths, but also not wanting to face that heat again, we decided to go to the Texas Ranger Museum next. Does anyone else think of the baseball team when I say Texas Ranger Museum? Even though I was born and raised in Texas, (or because I was?) the phrase Texas Ranger does not conjure up images of crime-fighting cowboys from the old west. It conjures up images of baseball uniforms, green playing fields, and hot dogs. If that's wrong, I'm sorry.

Here's a real Texas Ranger. OK, not a real one, but not a baseball player either.

This was something I found really interesting. It was adapted from the writing of a real, live Texas Ranger in the 1830's or 40's. (What do they mean adapted?) Take time to read it. You won't be sorry.

And this? This was a real jail cell door. I do not think I would like to hear this slamming shut behind me. That's why I never break the law. The sound of that door would just be so...final. And loud.

After the museum we ventured across the street to Waco's first public cemetery. Does anyone else out there find old cemeteries irresistible? I couldn't wait to get in there and walk among all those old tombstones. To imagine who those people were and how they died. How they lived.

Richard Harrison was a doctor. But it didn't keep him alive past the age of 55.

Here's the full view of Doc Harrison's tombstone. I'm sure he was an important man in Waco in the 1800's. But I bet people still called him "Doc."

Mrs. George T. Coates lived just short of 23 years.

And here's Little Kate. This tombstone actually answers the question of how Mrs. Coates died. If you'll notice, Little Kate has only one date, her birth and death were the same day. Her mother, Catherine Minerva, wife of George T. Coates, died 2 days later. I didn't actually notice this in the cemetery. I wish I had. I wish I could have spent a little more time with this family. They are all buried there together.

By the time Ron got his morbid wife out of the graveyard, the temperature had cooled a little bit. We'd promised the kids we would take them to the old suspension bridge that spans the Brazos River near downtown.

And when I say old, I mean old.

It's still open for pedestrian and equine traffic. We walked the span of it's creaky boards and fell it sway and bounce. It was quiet, with just a few other people around and a lone fisherman in the river below us. I could almost hear the clop of horse hooves and the squeak and groan of a wagon belonging to a family coming to Waco to settle down, to live here. And as proved by Waco's cemetery, to die here.

I love to visit old places. I love to try to imagine how it looked when it was new. I know in the grand scheme, none of this is really very old. But there's still history here. Lots of it. It's enough to make you want to stop, listen, and just soak it all in.

Snapshots of a Saturday: Zoo Edition

<center><a href="http://www.lifeonthehayfarm.com"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2538/3712146438_74ae990414_o.jpg"/></a></center>

I'd love to have you join my new photo meme! Here's the rules (they're easy, I promise!):

*Any photos you post must be your own.

*Nothing vulgar or obscene, please.

*Mr. Linky will go live late Friday night and you'll have as long as you like to post your link.

*Try to post pictures of your Saturday adventures, but if you have another day you'd rather share, feel free.

*The photos don't have to be from the same day you post. They can be a recent adventure, or something from long ago.

*No subject is too mundane. If you'd like to share, we want to enjoy!

*Please link back to LOTHF by grabbing the header from above. Thanks!

That's about it. I hope this will inspire us to take our cameras EVERYWHERE (well, almost) in case of spontaneous adventure.

Last weekend Ron and I took the kiddos on a mini-vacation. We live just over an hour from Waco, TX, but had never visited there. The town has lots of museums and other kid-friendly things to do, some of which I wrote about in my previous posts.

On Saturday we started out at the Cameron Park Zoo. Cameron Park is large complex of fun stuff like a frisbee golf course, splash pad, etc...and the zoo, of course. I wish we could have explored more of it. I think a family could spend an entire day there!

As a little background before I show my photos: We used to read our kids Bill Peet books all the time when they were little. He wrote and illustrated wonderful stories about crazy animals and people. But one of our favorites was a true story that he wrote about his family. It was called Capyboppy, and it was about how his son raised a Capybara until it too big for their family to handle. Then they donated it to a local zoo. My older daughter, who is 12, has loved Capybaras since that time and has always wanted to see one in person. The Dallas Zoo used to have one, but it died of old age before we were able to visit it.

When we set out for the zoo last Saturday, she asked the familiar question, "Does this zoo have a capybara?" I had searched the zoo's website and didn't find any mention of one, so I told her that it didn't look like it. Well, I think you can guess where this is going. We hadn't been there long when I turned around and spotted this:

What a surprise! My daughter was so thrilled. We must have stood there for a good fifteen minutes just watching it. (And all it was doing was laying there.) I wish that it hadn't been behind that tight chain-link fence. It's so hard to get a good picture that way. Here's a pic I found on the web:

And how cute is this!!

Here's the sign from the zoo for those of you who might have never heard of a capybara:

I got some great pics on the rest of our visit, but frankly, we could have left right after the capybara and still say we had a great time!

Thanks for visiting the zoo with us! Hope you have a great weekend!

A zoo preview

I'll be posting all about our trip to the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco, TX, tomorrow for my Snapshots of a Saturday meme. But in the meantime, here's a little preview to tide you over.

Heritage Square

After a brief respite in our hotel room, Ron and I took the kiddos to Heritage Square in downtown Waco so they could play in the fountains. Who needs a swimming pool?

Dr Pepper Museum

Our next destination was the Dr Pepper Museum. I didn't really know what to expect. I'd never been to a museum dedicated solely to a soft drink before. It turned out to be quite interesting!

We were greeted by this gentleman whose name escapes me, but the important thing to remember is that he invented Dr Pepper. Although when it was new it wasn't called Dr Pepper, it was called "a Waco" because Waco was the only place it was available.

Along the tour were special "Twitpic" sites where you could take a photo and upload it the Dr Pepper Museum's twitter page. For some reason this seemed strange to me. That a museum would have a special Twitpic tour, but hey, that's just me. And to satisfy your curiosity...no, I did not sign up to follow any Dr Pepper museum updates on Twitter.

Speaking of curiosities...this little gem really caught my attention. It's a life size model of a horse made from Dr Pepper bottle caps and cans. Seriously.

Here's a close up.

This is the original artesian well that was located in the bottling plant (where the museum is now). It was excavated down about 27 ft. in the 1990's and is now a permanent exhibit. I bet that was some good Dr Pepper!

And on the way out we saw this refurbished delivery truck. That would have been a welcome sight in a small Texas town back in the early 1900's!

There is also a real soda fountain there where they will make you a Dr Pepper or any other soda under the Dr Pepper umbrella. I would recommend anyone visiting Waco or the nearby area to take time to a tour. Fun for the whole family!