Sunday we got up and headed off to LeAnn’s (and Scott’s) house to visit there for a while. It being daytime, I didn’t think the blinkies would keep the kids entertained. Instead I brought decks of Magic: The Gathering cards, the game Corwin has taken an interest in. The kids found this wonderfully exciting and we basically spent the entire time playing that game, Scott and I serving as referees although I did manage to get in one game. Ashlyn in particular was wildly enthusiastic about playing, especially when she beat Corwin the first two games (Corwin was a very good sport about it, despite Ashlyn literally bouncing around the room in her victory dance). Corwin managed to bring the final score to 2-3 games, so he wasn’t totally crushed. He was even nice enough that after he beat Ashlyn with one of my tuned decks and she responded by asking “let me play with that deck!”, he let her use the deck (and, amusing, winning anyway). I myself was nice enough to not go around hanging people by their thumbs for bending my cards.
Next on our trip agenda was a trip over to the Plimouth Plantation, a recreation of the original Plymouth colony circa 1627. This was primarily for Corwin, whose class is studying the colony. The main village is “populated” by re-enactors who “work” in the village as the original colonists did. The construction is all historically accurate and presumably takes enough maintenance to keep a good part of the staff busy.
Corwin was supposed to ask the staff questions, as they are trained to be able to provide lots of historical details, but Corwin would barely talk to any of them. He mainly interacted with the chickens, becoming very concerned that they might escape.
Corwin tries to make friends
However, Corwin did get tagged by one of the staff in to helping fix a fence. This consisted of digging a bit for a plank of the fence (which Corwin simply didn’t weigh enough to do) and then putting a nail in to hold the plank in place. Because they used iron nails, Corwin had to first drill a pilot hole. Even then, it was difficult to not bend the nail. Corwin did quite well, only bending the nail a bit (easily corrected by the staffer) and keeping at the task with some diligence.
Corwin works under close supervision
Charles spent his time there finding little bits of fabric and chunks of wood and creating constructs with them.
Charles struggles to create despite the limited set of working materials
Charles did complain of hunger early on and had a near melt down when I tried to pick out a snack for him at the gift shop, where he didn’t like anything I was willing to buy for him (lack of disaster-sized after-snack mess was my primary concern). Eventually I found some gummy lobsters which he liked “very much”.
Alice lazed the time away in her stroller, except when the terrain was very rough. Then she’d whine and cry because Mom took her out in order to move the stroller.
During a second pass through the backup gift shop, I ended up buying a small model ship for Charles, complete with masts and riggings. I figured it wouldn’t make it back to the hotel but as I write this it’s still intact. It’s survived not only Charles and Alice but the entire trip back spent mostly in Charles’ rolling bag.
For Corwin, we bought a stuffed rat, putatively life sized for the kind of rat that lived on the Mayflower. Corwin was pretty impressed with just how big a rat can get. Still, he was quite taken with the rat, wanting to play with it (although that mostly consisted of rubbing it on himself in the back seat while calling out “help! help! it’s eating me!”). Corwin took it in to class to donate and didn’t really describe the reaction, except that Keith tried to kill it and Andrea gave it a hug.
After all that, we headed out to the Mayflower II, a duplicate of the original Mayflower that sailed from the same port in the UK to Boston and is now a floating museum.
Corwin liked the ship, Alice was indifferent (although the ready availability of danger made her happy) and Charles didn’t much care for it at all. He was willing to look at a few things but mostly he moped or gazed wistfully out to sea, as if he could see freedom beckoning (freedom meaning “playing in the hotel room”).
Alice was a bit of fun while heading out to the ship. The dock was planking over the harbor and Alice did not like the fact that she could see open water in the gaps between the planks. She refused to step over such gaps and had to be carried.
Alice is stymied by a yawning gap
Corwin explored everywhere on the ship, although he wasn’t too fond of below decks. It really is astonishing to see just how small a boat it was, not much bigger than a fancy yacht that had to carry over 100 people along with enough supplies for all of them for two months. The beds for the officers looked like they’d barely fit Corwin and must have been truly horrid in any sort of hot, humid weather. I don’t think Corwin really grasped just how unpleasant it was. I think some more camping might help him out with that…
Corwin and fishing gear
What both boys enjoyed most, however, was a side exhibit demonstrating the purpose of pulleys and block and tackles. The boys spent a long time there and had to be dragged away to let some other boys try it out. Now and then I would have to intervene to keep the boyen from fighting over access to the pulleys. If only I could get them to do that much work when they’re at home!
Boys working pulleys