Day 6 donned bright and brisk. Zayden woke up at 5:30 so I was up with the birds. Everyone else slept in the wagon until about 8.
Having not gone to bed until after midnight I was running on the kids' excitement because I was exhausted!
She was beyond ecstatic about the day.
Mia was having a rough morning full of tantrums. This is the best she could do for a picture.
We had a simple picnic breakfast and then went to town to do the historical society tour.
Our first stop was the gift shop to purchase our Laura loving fan her own prairie dress. Thank you, Grandma Num and Papa Curtis.
We got to see the Surveyor's House, a school house, the Brewster school, and the house Ma and Pa Ingalls had in town last. It was a delight to me to watch Natalee nod along with the tour guide, answer questions, and interject her own knowledge. Xavier enjoyed pieces of the tour also, and the little guys did their very best. That's a lie - Ameliya was a full fledged toddler terror but we love her anyways.
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the Surveyor's House but it was very neat. There was a dresser Charles Ingall built and much other rich history. Natalee spotted the treasure trove pantry right away!
The one room school house was the actual school that Laura and Carrie attended in De Smet. What history! When they converted the school back from a house and were peeling off wall paper they found original blackboards underneath with drawings on them. Treasure!
Natalee liked looking at the McGuffey Readers and the spelling books.
At the school, the children got to try their hand at using a coffee grinder and grinding wheat into flour to make bread. The Ingalls had to do this for four hours a day to make enough flour to eat daily during the long winter when snow stopped the railways.
The Brewster school was humbling in size and so very dark (as it would have been historically). Laura only had five students here at her first teaching assignment but she made a big difference in their lives.
Our last stop was Ma and Pa's town house. It was really beautiful. The historical society has done a beautiful job keeping it accurate and preserving the pieces that remained from the era. Unfortunately we couldn't take interior pictures there either, but it was fun to see the original cupboards that Pa built and other things that belonged to the family. Natalee spotted the cellar door in the kitchen floor among other treasures. It was nice to see that, after much hardship, the end of Ma and Pa's life seemed to have some comforts.
The town house was quite impressive in size - maybe even more space than our house! Ha!
After the tour we at lunch at the Oxbow Restaurant and then went to the Discovery Center across from the Historical Society. The Discovery Center is basically a well kept one room school house with hands on activities for children. This was maybe the first time we saw Ameliya really smile and relax in over 24 hours so we stayed for quite a long time.
Zayden was along too, of course - what a trooper he was!
They all loved the old fashioned stove and pots/pans so much. They have terrific imaginations.
Once we realized we were going to hang out awhile and since we were the only ones there, we let little guy down to stretch and roam. He spent a lot of time admiring himself in the dress up mirror.
Trying their hand at the old sewing machine!
School time! Mike, Xavier and I sat down and let Natalee teach us. She's strict!
She ended up with a little teacher's assistant...
We eventually drug everyone away from Discovery Center to go to the Ingalls Homestead and enjoy the activities there. I quickly realized, though I was very relaxed about our approach to seeing everything, that my estimation of a day+ to do it all was not enough for our kids. We met another family who thought my 5ish hours allotted for Ingalls Homestead was insane because there "wasn't enough to do." She was very nice, but we're very different people - my kids LOVED all the hands on activities both in town and at the homestead and could have stayed 2-3 days and never been bored. I'll blog the homestead in {Part 2} as it's enough to fill several pages of diary!
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