New England In the Summer

This was not our year for FSY. Our congregation was assigned to go last summer, and most of the youth went. But we were still isolating, so Peter and Cooper stayed home. This year our Bishop encouraged the boys to sign up as soon as it was open to off-year participants. I meant to sign up right away, but we were waiting on a scheduling issue, so it took a few weeks. By the time I was able to register them, the closest For the Strength of Youth Conference was full. So, I searched for the next closest. That is why Bryan spent aaaalllll of last Monday driving Peter and Cooper up to their camp in Amherst, Massachusetts. 

He drove up, dropped them off, then turned around and drove back, all in one day. That made for a very, very, long day for Bryan. We decided to break up the trip to retrieve them into two days, in part because we had to collect them by 7:30 on Saturday morning and we had no desire to leave our house at 3AM. Because Phoebe had left for Bishop's camp the day before, she missed out on our drive up to New England. We left in the early afternoon on Friday.

New England has a lot of trees. I'm sure it's beautiful in the fall, but the green of summer is my favorite.

I believe the last time we took a road trip with only two kids was in 2009. For real life.

It was about a four and a half hour drive up to Amherst. We took the scenic route instead of the city route which possibly saved us a few hours, depending on traffic.

We checked into our hotel for the night, then drove around campus to see where we would need to pick them up the next morning. I started taking pictures of areas on campus, then texting them to Peter and Cooper to show them where we were. Apparently we just missed Cooper at one building.

Cooper told us that the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is the tallest library in the US. I didn't get to go inside, but I did get out of the car to take a picture with it!

As we were driving around campus I found this lab and sent the picture to my sister, Paige. Maybe she's secretly a scientist in Massachusetts? By the way, I cannot spell the name of that state. I have had spell check correct me every time I've typed it.

The next morning Peter and Cooper were sad to leave the new friends they had made, but happy to see their siblings.

We could have gotten right on the road for home, but a friend had told me about a museum in town that I wanted to visit and it didn't open until 10 o'clock. So we got some breakfast, then visited Emily Dickinson's grave ("Oh! Statue world!" as Topher said when we walked into the cemetery), then found a fun park so Topher and Sophie could get some energy out. It was, in fact, such a fun park that Topher was completely filthy when we left. We had to detour back to our hotel room (thankfully we still had some time before checkout) so he could have a bath.

Then, with Topher clean and wearing his clean-ish clothes from the day before, we went to the Eric Carle Museum! This car is outside the museum. When we saw it I said to the kids, "Oh look, it's the Very Hungry Car-tipllar." Who says only dads can make up those jokes?

The museum was small, but lovely. Only the first room was dedicated to Eric Carle. They have a huge collection, but it appears that they rotate out pieces for different exhibits. This one was about his time in Japan and the collaborative work he did there. These two quotes spoke to my heart.

Visitors were invited to sit and create their own books after viewing Carle's work.

The second room was a collection about the artist Claire A. Nivola. I wasn't familiar with her work and I LOVED it! Her use of color and line was so beautiful.

The final exhibit (there was a fourth, but I only found out when I found the link for the museum to add to this post, oops) was all about depictions of horses in literature. It was delightful. Topher appreciated the puppet theater.

This was my favorite piece from the room.

Guess what else that exhibit had on display! A real Caldecott medal! I sent this picture to a few friends and one of them responded that she didn't realize they were actual, physical medals. I hadn't realized either, but now that I've seen one it makes sense that they would be more than just a symbol added to the front of beautiful picture books.

As we finished our visit we of course had to stop in the bathroom since we would be on the road for many hours. The bathroom was themed to match the museum! If you know the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, then these characters will look familiar.

Our drive home was mostly uneventful, except when we had to pull of the freeway and find a bathroom right away because Topher had consumed two kid sized sodas and a Frosty from Wendy's. We found a port-a-potty at a park. He was NOT impressed.

Pennsylvania has fewer trees than Massachusetts (ha! I corrected my own misspelling that time!), but it's still pretty.

We got back into town minutes before Phoebe returned from camping. We had just enough time to drop off our stuff and go pick her up. It was nice to have everyone back together.