The food waste is pretty minimal this time. You remember that strange concoction that I made before Thanksgiving? Well, we all ate as much of it as we could stand to eat and this is what was leftover. Remind me not to put fresh cranberries in my dinner anymore, m'kay? There are still some herbs and a bit of canned pumpkin languishing in my fridge, so I may have to post another update soon. It all depends on how creative I get this week!
We took a family trip to San Antonio today, to see the Mummies of the World exhibit at the Witte Museum. All of the 1st Graders at Lila's school have been studying Ancient Egypt and that included a brief study of mummification. I saw a LivingSocial deal for this exhibit and it seemed like a perfect tie-in. It was grim, but fascinating! Eli was creeped out by the whole thing, except for the mummified cats, which he declared to be "cute". We were all creeped out by the mummified babies.
The museum seemed like a great one for kids, but we didn't get to explore beyond the mummy exhibit. Once we came out of that wing, it was lunchtime. We were planning to eat lunch, grab a little quiet time in the car, then head back for more fun. Unfortunately, the kids couldn't manage to stay quiet for even 5 minutes in the car and they gave no indication that their rowdiness and disrespect would get better outside of the car, so we called it a day and drove back home.
Lila had her own little adventure when she got separated from us and was temporarily lost. Doug and Eli (who had had all the dead bodies he could stand) left the exhibit first and went out to the lobby, or so I thought. Lila was ready to go about 5-7 minutes sooner than me, so I told her she could head out of the exhibit and wait with Dad. I assumed that had worked out. What really happened was that the boys had gone into an adjoining room, which was not visible from the lobby.
When Lila didn't see them, she went out the front doors to look. (I suppose she remembered an employee telling us at the beginning that we couldn't re-enter the mummy exhibit once we left.) Someone spotted her and directed her to a museum security guard. I came out of the exhibit a few minutes later, oblivious to the whole thing, and was headed for Doug and Eli when the security guard stopped me.
I thought he was about to hassle me about not having a ticket or something, but he said they were trying to find the parents of a lost little girl. I said, "Oh, that's probably my daughter!" I followed the man outside and there she was, sitting calmly with a couple of Fire Department EMTs who happened to be there at the same time. The whole thing scared her, naturally, but she was very brave and was able to give them her name, my name, my phone number, and what city we were from.
The security guard called my phone to let me know where Lila was, but that didn't do much good since we were made to power off our phones before going in to see the mummies. There was just one little tear on her cheek - very pitiful. I picked her up and held her tight and thanked the men for helping her. On the way back to the car, I asked her if she needed to talk about what happened. She said, "No." I asked her if she wanted to talk about what happened. She said, "No."
Over lunch, we did discuss a little bit about good protocol if you get separated from your group and we decided that we'd have a meet-up location from now on, whenever we go to a big place like that. I'm just thanking God that it all turned out as well as it did and not letting myself think about all the things that could have happened!
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