I have decided to include occasional posts about some more personal things in our lives because homeschooling really is a lifestyle, and I thought it might be helpful to you to see how we live.
On Sunday, April 28, 2013, we spent the afternoon and evening at Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. It was an overcast, windy day and it rained a little bit, but we had so much fun. We went with another family from church and our Pastor. We attend a family-integrated church, and we spend a lot of time with people from our church. (I will do some future posts about our church as well).
There were street performers. This violinist was the first one I saw, and the rest of our group turned to go in the opposite direction, but I refused to follow the group until I had, at least, captured one photo of this talented young man.
Anybody remember where "Bubba Gump" became famous? Have you seen the movie from years ago, "Forrest Gump"?
Yes, Ripley's has a museum there. We did not pay to enter. We simply viewed what we could from the sidewalk and took some photos.
This car was just the right size for our youngest.
Though he hasn't seen any of the Transformer movies, our youngest loves Bumblebee, so when we saw Bumblebee in the doorway, we knew we had to get this photo.
Looking into the museum, we could see the first couple of exhibits, and I had to take a photo of this. This states that the tallest man was 8' 11" tall. Our 15-year-old is 6' 2" tall and still has a few years of growing he can do. I certainly hope he doesn't get as tall as this man was. It's hard enough to get him shoes and pants now!
This street performer was not overly impressive to our group, as the other family has a son who could probably have done all of this performer's tricks at a higher level. He was entertaining, though, and when he hugged this little fellow from the audience, I had to capture that moment.
This is Grandma Georgia and Grandma Ruth to all of the children at our church. They are great ladies who are really a lot of fun to hang around with. Here they are waving to us from a ship that they paid to enter to tour. It was very historic and had four levels. They enjoyed it.
Our youngest son said this ship reminded him of a pirate ship.
I thought these colorful dragon paddleboats all lined up at their dock made an interesting shot.
There were lots of beautiful flowers growing in many areas, but I really liked these pansies.
This is in the center of the Barnes and Noble bookstore. We are pretty sure it was once some kind of factory or warehouse. It is certainly a very sturdy building.
Something about this goofy fish statue, brought out the fish in several of our group:
My friend, Becky, is on the right, and her fish face made me laugh. I told her I thought she looked like Dory ("Finding Nemo") and we laughed, and she said, "Everyone says that." It's so much fun to laugh with good friends.
This young girl was the last street performer we saw, and she sang an original song that she wrote. She had a lovely voice. She is very talented and her dad was with her and had set up her keyboard and mic.
Below are some of the photos I captured as darkness began to descend:
Becky's sweet daughter, Chelsea, wanted to go into the candy store, so I said I'd go with her -- that was a mistake :)
This was the name of the candy store.
Supersized boxes of Willy Wonka's Everlasting Gobstoppers. They had lots of supersized candy items.
Earlier in the day, we had discussed getting matching T-shirts with our church name on the back for the next time we go out as a group, so we can find everyone more easily when we separate for a while. When Grandma Ruth saw these shirts in the candy store, she said, "Here are our T-Shirts!" (They say "One Hot Chick")
This is sweet Chelsea holding a supersized Twizzlers.
Some stuffed candy characters (Nerds above and M&M's below)
My sweet baby with a supersized TootsiePop (No, I didn't buy it). I did, however, buy a little bit of a few different kinds of candy -- Red Swedish fish, Cherry Nibs, Reese's Pieces, and some cool colored M&M's that don't come in the normal bags of M&M's.
This was lots of fun, but the price when I went to the checkout was quite a shock. Then Grandma Georgia saw this sign and said,
"They certainly do." (The sign says, "We're gonna get you Sucker.") Becky's husband, Warren, says they definitely rely on impulse shoppers, and that's what I was -- in a new, cool candy store, unlike any I've seen before and with novel candies. I won't be visiting this store again, but I'm sure we'll return to Inner Harbor. Our oldest son wants to ride in one of those Dragon Paddleboats. (Yes, even though this was Sunday, I count it as a school day because we were on a field trip of sorts. Monday, April 29, we went to the library and I checked out a book with lots of photos of the history of Inner Harbor for us to study a bit this week, to make this field trip experience complete. Though, sometime, we'll have to go back to visit the Aquarium, and that's a field trip in itself.
