My friend Laura and I met up at the Randall Museum with our kids this morning. It seemed like a perfect rainy day outing. All I can say is, we’ve lived here for almost three years, and WHY HAVE WE NOT YET BEEN TO THIS FREE MUSEUM?
It rocked. It’s perfect for kids Mary Judah’s age, though Killian also had a blast. They have several animals, including an area where the kids could go in to pet rabbits, chickens, a duck and a guinea pig. They had a bird area with crows and doves and several other birds, and another bird area with quail and several songbirds. There was also an opossum, a desert tortoise, a barn owl, and smaller cages and tanks with wood roaches, a tarantula, an alligator lizard, a tree frog, two kinds of snakes, mice, walking sticks, and a bat that slept in a blanket. Too cute!
They had a place where you could build towers of out big Legos, and then push a button and watch as the building platform shook, simulating an earthquake and knocking down your tower. There was a play house, complete with kid-sized recycling and compost cans, that the kids climbed in and hid, a-la-Oscar-the-Grouch.
None of the kids wanted to leave when it was time to go - and we scored by going close to lunchtime. Though busy when we first arrived, the place pretty much cleared out as kids and their caretakers went home for lunch and naps.
Mary Judah got a cute little owl-covered journal to use when we go hiking from Robin and Richard as part of her Christmas present. When we got home today, she pulled it out and asked me to write in it about our trip to the museum.
Two days ago, while we were all eating lunch at the dining room table, Joshua spotted a couple of birds riding a thermal out the window. We went the window to get a better look, and those two birds turned out to be red-tailed hawks! Living half a block away from Golden Gate Park sure has its benefits! Mary Judah got to try out her binoculars (part of her Christmas present from her Granddad).
I am constantly amazed at all the cool things there are to do, right within our city, and how much we are able to connect with nature, without ever having to leave the city limits.