Wild Ride Day 5

Enterprise Rent-A-Car was our first stop once we arrived back in Newport News…not an experience that would normally be blog worthy BUT ... I'd initially scored a weekend rate and the car was decent enough even though the last renter was clearly a smoker. It wasn't suffocating enough to merit waiting another ½ hour for a better car, plus I really really didn't relish the idea of getting stuck in Richmond traffic, so off we went. This was last Friday of course….so fast forward to Monday, where this rambling of mine began, and I'm in the rental agency returning the car. The chickadee behind the counter was working up all the relevant paperwork and asked if everything was okay with the rental. I said that yes, it was, except it was a little smoky when we picked it up. So she apologized and asked if there was anything I'd like them to do about that, to which I jokingly replied, "Sure! You could just give me the whole thing free!" Chickadee laughed and said she couldn't do that of course, but she could take one of the days off for me. Yeah baby! I love customer service. You just can't beat a 3 day, standard size car rental for $50!

The plan for the next 3 days was to hang out with my super amazing friend, Kyndra. She's a science teacher/guru and knows lots of great places to visit; so first on the Monday agenda was a trip to the Virginia Living Museum. What a superbly cool place! The picture below is from the bubonic plague/French catacombs portion of the Microbe exhibit. I'm not sure if he meant to pick the dead guy's nose or not. I'd rather not know.

Jaden's pretty into the science thing too, but you've gotta wonder how much kids are actually absorbing in a place like that. Apparently J absorbed everything Kyndra told him because he's still talking about it all almost a week later! Yesterday he tells Grant, "And there was this bad flu that stopped a whole war (Spanish Influenza, WWI) 'cause it killed so many people there weren't enough left to fight. Then it mysteriously disappeared and Mom thinks that's kind of scary, but I don't know why." So why doesn't he absorb that whole 'say excuse me when you burp' thing?? Maybe it would help if Kyndra said it!!

The exhibits were all very hands-on, which translates to 6-year old paradise. Below is a pic of J and Kyndra exploring everything they could get their hands on without the museum employees yelling at them.