Trip to the Capitol

As summer draws to a close I am still checking off some of our Summer Sanity-2016 Bucket List.  A friend of mine had suggested taking the kids and going to tour the Arkansas State Capitol.  When I called to schedule the tour I discovered that there was a Capitol Quest Scavenger Hunt that was self guided.  I threw the idea out to a few of my mom friends and they jumped right on board.  The hunt is geared more to kids Peyton's age and older, so since we had quite a few kids (19 to be exact) who were kindergarten age or younger, we decided to wing it a bit.

We had such cute little Capitol explorers, who I must say really did pretty good overall.  The security guards did give them a pre-exploration talk explaining that this was a place of business where people are doing real work and that with all the marble in the building, even the smallest noise would echo throughout the halls.  They certainly weren't quiet as a mouse but given the age and number or our little posse, I was fairly impressed with our children.

Usually the Treasurers Office is open and allows tourists to hold $100 K and get your picture made with it but unfortunately the office was closed yesterday.  I was a little bummed that several of the usual areas to tour were closed off but our kids enjoyed peeking in the windows to see where discussions take place and where laws are officially signed.  

The architecture throughout the building is really beautiful.  We learned that the Capitol building is 105 years old.  That there have been 45 Governors and 10 who had to step in as Governor due to death or a resignation.  As we walked around we were able to read a few of the informative boards that spoke to the history of the building and the people who have served there.  We talked about the different styles of pillars throughout the Capitol and counted the pillars and balconies that encircle the rotunda area.  The kids enjoyed seeing all the state flags that line the hallways and Emerson surprised me when he said "hey, thats George Washington".  When I pulled the green flag out to look, there in fact was George Washington in the centered of Washington's state flag.

We rode the elevator a lot since there were three of us Mom's who had a stroller in tow (thanks to Carol, who caught this assertive moment of me asking Ava Jane to "please press the button!")  Toward the end of our tour the kids started down the stairs leaving us no choice but to flex our Mommy muscles--a special thanks goes out to the gentleman who helped Lynn get Micah's stroller down the staircase.

As you can see, our group was clearly not subtle as we traipsed around the marbled out building, but I did enjoy getting to do something we hadn't done before that was indoors and included air-conditioning!

We are trying to enjoy every last minute of summer as we squeeze in the last few things I'd hoped to do on our break.   I enjoyed making a memory with this sweet group of friends.  (Our kids have gotten pretty good at looking at the camera--I was impressed to see how this group shot turned out!)

After the above picture was snapped we tried to quietly and quickly exit the building.  Once on the outside, we let the kids run off some energy as they ran up and down the Capitol steps.  We ended our time by chowing down at Chick-Fil-A then we headed home for naps!