We got off to a rocky start...ha ha, no pun intended!
Eva loves to help navigate with my phone, while I drive.
She must have touched something, because I followed all her directions, and ended up in the village of East Aurora.
You have arrived.
We looked around....not exactly. We were surrounded by cafes and shops on a main drag. The only fossils there were lined up for the early bird specials.
Try again. Rerouting, this time to Penn Dixie
https://penndixie.org/
So 24 minutes later, we had arrived for real.
That stunk. Half hour of quality car time.
We step out of the car, and it was like a wind tunnel. It was so loud (and cold) we couldn't even hear the guy. Bummer.
We went down the field, and it actually got warmer in the valleys from wind protection.
They were so excited to be here.
Dylan exclaimed as he walked the hills, "This is beautiful!! I could sit down here and notebook sketch!"
Dyleva found a bunch of fossils right away!
And not just tiny ones, fully intact fossils!
Which was good, because 15 minutes after we got there it started to rain.
Huh.
So we trekked again back up to the car.
We had lunch. By now the ninos were starving so we had a car picnic.
The rain passed, and then we got back out there.
This time we were ready to go! Full of energy!
At least Dylan was.
Now this may make me sound like a bad mom, but sometimes I just give up.
I annoy myself at times because I sound like a broken record. Especially with Dylan.
No matter how many times I say, "Dyl, be careful there, slow down, please don't climb on that, get down, no you can't do a flip off the roof, blah, blah, blah."
He doesn't listen. He hears, but has no common sense when it comes to cause and effect. And then he is the first one sobbing when he gets hurt. And he doesn't learn from his mistakes because he continues the same behavior another day.
My son will be the new Jackass.
So I stop pestering him.
Today, I am sure I said to him, "please go slow and be careful."
and I'm done.
Of course, there is Eva. As if I am not annoying enough, she starts to lecture him.
Sure enough.
I look up. I knew it was coming. He's running on slate mountains in flip flops, jumping over the creek, etc.
Dylan comes flying, running down one of the hills full throttle, can't put on the breaks at the bottom and falls backward into the muddy creek.
Not my finest mommy moment.
He's sobbing that he's wet and cold and embarrassed.
I ignored him. I gave him a warning look that his crying had better not get any louder, and I kept on digging.
Beside I had Eva at my side cracking up with the 'I told you so's.'
And he'll do the same thing next time.
Oh this boy. What am I going to do with this boy?
Well, Dylan was in luck. Because about 15 minutes after his fall, came a soaking rain.
And with that, I threw in the towel. Some things just were not meant to be.
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| Eva's fossils |
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| Dylan's fossils |
All three of us drenched, Dylan had to sit on a blanket in the car because the whole back of him was covered in mud.
We left.
I needed ice cream.
