The 'Clifford' Museum and an ice cream snafu

Yesterday I had to go to the Greyhound bus depot in San Jose to send 3 large boxes of gear to a friend in Chico who will be running a Mom's Breastaurant booth this weekend at the Endangered Species Festival. I mentioned to Sayer that the depot was only a couple blocks away from the Children's Discovery Museum (which she and Duncan call the Clifford Museum because the first time we went it had a big Clifford exhibit ... next month it'll be opening a Curious George exhibit ...). I asked if she wanted to go and she got a big silly smile on her face. But she wanted to keep it a secret to surprise Duncan.

She decided a little while later that maybe she didn't want to go, because the Curious George exhibit wasn't there yet. That was fine with me, as we had other errands to run after the bus depot (and honestly, after visiting the Strong Museum in Rochester NY, the CDM is a really big let-down. sigh). But as we got off of 280 onto 87 and passed the big purple building with the blow-up duck on the roof, I asked if she was sure. She decided she wasn't sure. Then she said she wanted to go. So, after dropping off the boxes of gear at the depot, we went.

They played with clay. They made foam prints. They played with circles and bubbles and the sand table. They had a great time. And since I limited it to 2 hours, I did okay, too. :)

When we left we quickly ran our other errands, which included stopping at the library to pick up an armload of books on hold for us. Then we came home and Sayer worked on ETC and requested history. I decided against starting a new lesson since a number of the books we'd just picked up were stories from China and India, which we covered in our last two lessons. So we sat down and read several books.

When Mark came home we sat down to dinner and discussed a possible surprise for dessert (it was 31 cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins). Sayer kept prying for details, and we kept telling her it was a surprise and she'd find out faster if she stopped asking and started eating. :) Eventually both kiddos were done and they climbed into the car with Mark and went looking for the local Baskin Robbins. I stayed home because I'd realized that Duncan's bedding was still out on the line and his bed needed to be made so that they could go to bed when they got home. And I wanted to finish vacuuming.

Turns out, though, that the local Baskin Robbins changed hands and apparently lost their franchise. The shop still exists, but it's an independent now, not part of their chain. That clearly tells you how often we go out for ice cream. But the kids had been promised a surprise for dessert, so Mark took them shopping to pick out their ice cream flavor and got sugar cones. They'd never had cones before :) And Duncan picked the ice cream flavor - mint chocolate chip. I guessed that it was because it was green (his favorite color by a mile). Mark agreed that after they'd discussed a couple other options, Duncan had picked that one because of color.

So I'd made the bed and just finished the vacuuming when they came back in. Mark dished up the ice cream and they enjoyed the novelty of the cone without minding that they hadn't gotten to go to the ice cream shop. Whew!