Georgia's Museum of Natural History and other campus things

While Andrew was in his meeting on Monday afternoon I walked the kids up the street from my building to the natural history museum (after sending Rachel outside to wait with the other kids while Zoë helped me in the book room for a little while). 

It's a pocket (of a) museum—a tiny little space—but the kids had a good time and learned some things. 

Zoë and Alexander did the little scavenger hunt they have for kids:

We finished up just in time to book it back to my office so that I could go to my meeting. The kids were tired from walking by this point in the day (we'd done about 5 miles of walking), so they just sat around the patio area reading books and collecting bugs.

After my meeting we finally, finally started on our way home. 

We stopped by the "split screw," a sculpture by Andrew T. Crawford, so the kids could put their arms up in the traditional "Y" pose that Rachel invented years and years ago when we hiked Y Mountain. 

Every time we see we think of BYU's Y. It even has the nice little serifs on top...

But it's just called "Split" and apparently Crawford enjoyed making art of tools used to make art. And now it lives on campus. 

Here are the kids walking down the many flights of stairs that lead to the parking lot. We never did figure out if there's an easier way to get through campus without using the stairs. Whenever I'd have to wheel anything from the parking lot to my building (or vice versa—we move a lot of books around in this profession! And there were a few stroller days as well) we would walk the whole way around (which according to Google Maps doesn't really add much distance, but which always felt like it did...perhaps because I was always lugging so much stuff when we took that route).

Zoë slid down most of the way:

This picture shows (1) that Alexander was a little too short to get up on the railings and (2) the tremendous effort Phoebe had to use to walk up and down those stairs.

Sometimes I imagine what the world would be like if things were sized to grown ups how they are to toddlers. I think we'd all get exhausted walking up the stairs pretty quick if they came up to our knees!

But one nice thing about being a toddler is that everyone always lets you push the button to cross the road. Not that it really matters because there's no limit to how many people can push that button on one go (so everyone who wants a turn can take one). There's also no rule about how many times you can push the button. Here's Phoebe pushing the button after we'd already safely crossed the street. She probably pushed it fifty times, happily listening to the little doot-doot sound until I pulled her away.

We stopped at Cook Out on the way home, in part because we went to Cook Out on my first day of orientation when we all headed to campus together (another memory that looms large in Phoebe's mind), and also in part because Rachel wanted to (because it's her graduation and because she'll be leaving the south soon). So...fried chicken and hush puppies for dinner it was!

Phoebe wanted "French pies" (fries) so we got some of those, too.

I sat beside her and we shared a tray with Alexander. Every time I dipped something in ketchup, she'd say, "Thank you!" and try to take it from me. It got to be pretty comical. I kept having to remind her that I was feeding myself and she was feeding herself...so anything I was dipping was intended for my face, not hers.