Columbus Day Close to Home

 We decided to live it up with a little fun close to home for Flat Stanley's last week here. First, he sneaked into Penny's backpack for a chance to head back to pre-school. Parents aren't allowed into the classrooms, so I'm not exactly sure what they did there and I didn't give Penny the camera to document the visit. It must have been pretty fun, though, because he came back even more adventurous than before. 

Sometimes when people feel extra adventurous, they try something they never did before - eat octopus, climb a really big mountain, go skydiving. With a little encouragement from Penny, Stanley's sense of adventure led him to explore the world of body art. Being flat, tattoos made a little less sense than some simple finger paint. In no time at all, Stanley was feeling really stylish, ready to head out and tackle anything. 

Our first task was to take some of our pumpkins from last week and make them into some tasty treats. Stanley helped scoop out the seeds and roll them in butter, cinnamon and sugar so we could bake and eat them. We also baked the pumpkin itself to make some lovely cookies.

We took some of our yummy treats on the road with us to the Staten Island Children's Museum. It's not the world's biggest museum, but it has tons of fun stuff to do and there were a whole lot of kids there for Columbus Day weekend. Stanley started off slow with a little giant board game fun. He was doing pretty well at Connect Four. It was tough getting the pieces in because the holes were so high, but Penny helped.

Stanley actually got to try his hand at camouflage in the insect wing of the museum. Here he is helping Penny arrange colorful little plastic pieces to decorate the wings of the butterfly. I'll bet you can barely see him!

At last it was time to go home, not just from the museum, but also for Stanley to return to Georgia. Penny, now nearing the completion of her third year as an islander, felt a little pirate-y about the sendoff. She tied Stanley to the mast of a nearby sloop and sent him southward with a fond, "Fare thee well, Matey!"

Queens County Farm Museum

When most people think of New York City, they think of the skyscrapers, subways and busy streets of Manhattan. But there's actually five boroughs in NYC - Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Having explored the Brooklyn Children's Museum, taken the subway through Manhattan and enjoyed the Staten Island Ferry, we decided it was time to take Flat Stanley to a different borough. It seemed like a great weekend to visit to the Queens County Farm.

Queens County Farm is a long drive from where we live, but we picked up our friend Paul. Paul's daddy is also in medical school like Penny's daddy. Paul had one request when visiting the farm - he wanted to see some animals. We were in luck! There were lots of fun animals at the farm. We started by visiting some friendly chickens.

We just missed getting to watch the sheep shearing contest. The sheep looked a little cold there in little more than their skins. Here Stanley is trying to tell the sheep about the great sweater vendor just a few feet away. I don't know if he realized where her supplies had come from.

Not too far away, we found a great spot where they let us feed the animals. They had all kind of different things - from pigs and chickens to lizards, turtles and llamas. Penny had a great time finding which animals really wanted lettuce and carrots. It seemed that most of the rabbits and guinea pigs had already had their fill of carrots. But the pigs seemed pretty hungry (almost lost a finger or two!) and the llama was more than happy to eat several of our lettuce leaves. Penny was excited to see that she and the animals liked so many of the same vegetables.We were really looking forward to picking our own pumpkins, but managed to miss the open hours with all the excitement at the petting portion of the farm.

At the end of the day, we started the long journey home. We dropped off Paul at his house in Queens, then drove all the way through Brooklyn to get home to Staten Island. We had a nice dinner of chicken, carrots and celery (hmmm...I think we saw all those things on the farm). Penny started to type up our adventures on the computer with Stanley. But then it got pretty late, so we headed to bed.