A Blast From The Past

I remember going to Living History Farms as a child, it was one of my favorite places to visit. Sometimes I wonder if I had a previous life in the 1800s, I feel so at home there. The old buildings, the old clothing, the smell, everything is so exciting to me. My dad used to take me there when my brother and I were little for Christmas, we would walk around making Christmas ornaments and taffy, hear Christmas stories and sing Christmas carols. I remember one specific year when we walked around with dad and visited the wood-working building and the wood-worked make me a heart out of wood. I kept that thing for the longest time!

I've been trying to get the kids out of the house more often this summer than I have in past years. They are growing up so fast, I feel like I am missing out on doing things with them in the prime of their youth. Sure, they might be too young to remember specific details, but this is the time when family traditions are started. So this week, my good friend Danielle and I took our kids to go walk around Living History Farms. I hadn't been there in years!

Fabrics

Threads and bobbins

When I first told Natalli where we were going, she asked me if that was the place where Grandma Besch kicked the chickens into trees (oh, funny girl), so I had to explain to her that was indeed not where we were going. I, however, thought this childish question was worth telling Grandma Besch, to which she laughed so hard I thought milk was gonna come out of her nose!

I wasn't sure how the kids would receive the experience. They had never done anything like that before. The most they've ever walked in one day was at the zoo, and honestly, that doesn't require that much walking here. To my pleasant surprise they really seemed to love it! Besides the fact that we picked like the hottest day of the summer to go (we seem to have bad luck in that department) and we thought it would be a good idea to go with 6 kids (she had two, I had the other four, although one of them was the baby I nanny for), we had a really, really good time! We walked around the old 1875 town, the kids got to see the outfits that were "in" back in the day, what old buildings looked like and what kids did for fun. We got to walk through an old bank, printing house, lawyer's office, church, Dr's office, wood-working building, broom-maker, an old schoolhouse, an old farmhouse, and lots more. Konner and Natalli got to try their hands at making an official "Iowa" seal to go on official lawyer documents and Natalli go to use the printing press to make a sheet like they would newspapers (which took over 24 hours to dry)! We had lunch on some picnic tables and took numerous trips to the bathrooms, luckily they were not port-a-potties!




Natalli printing a piece of paper



Me with Konner and Natalli




Konner and Caden playing in the water fountain

Heath relaxing in the stroller



Konner making the seal of Iowa



Konner and Natalli in the schoolhouse

 


We spend 4 long hours there and didn't even get to finish everything. We made it all the way through town, but we didn't get a chance to visit all the old farmsteads (which we would have had to take a tractor to get to). By the end of the day the two babies were sleeping and Natalli was complaining every 5 minutes that she wanted to ride in one of the strollers. 3 year old Konner and 2 1/2 year old Caden were perfectly happy walking all day long, but the 5 year old needed a place to sit down. But I turned into bad mommy and made her walk the whole time! Gasp! How dare I make her get some exercise on a nice day! By the time we left everyone was tired, walked out and the weather was actually a lot nicer; go figure. One day we will have to go back and visit again so that we can finish our tour. Hopefully we will pick a day that's a little less sunny, a little less humid and a little less hot. Hopefully we can make it back before Danielle and her family move so that we can go back with them. We had the best time! And so let the memories, and the family traditions begin!