Columbus Day

What?  You don't celebrate Columbus Day at your house?  Strange.  

See, my kids do this thing where is we do something one time and they like it, they decided it is a tradition and insist on doing it every year.  And that is why we sailed cucumber boats down the little creek near our house on Columbus Day.  

Cole, thanks to a helpful Weekly Reader perusal earlier in school that day, was super helpful in providing us with lots of snippets of information - like that the Pinta was the biggest ship, which, coincidentally I'm sure, was the ship he chose.  

I'm not complaining.  It was pretty fun and it's always nice to be outside on a beautiful fall day.   So without further adieu, I present...

The Nina...

...and the Pinta...

 ...and the Santa Maria...

 

 ..and the Mayflower. Yep.  We know that was actually the Pilgrim's ship, but we had a leftover half a cucumber that we didn't really know what else to do with, so here it is on Plymouth Rock after a terrifying voyage down this little creek.

 And they're off!  Minus the Nina cause Ben was too busy exploring to be bothered by setting sail!

  We learned a little about river ecology (i.e., currents) that day and had a little practice pulling the boats out of eddy's.

 Sadly, we do not have any pictures of the most entertaining part of the day - when the boats reached the grate before traveling off to the ocean (or maybe the Great Salt Lake?  I totally don't know) and Mom got to quickly grab them so there were no lost ships (which *might* have happened last time we sailed).  No worries.  Mom pulled through this year and only mildly strained her hips.  She might need to practice her splits with Annie a little more before next year's adventure.

Next up:  National Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Or not - we'll see.