Field Trip: Oklahoma City

  The last couple of days have been filled with a little work, and a little play.  The play was especially fun!  Field trip days and places have to be flexible when your work takes you on the road!  This week: Oklahoma City. 
  The kids have loved visiting our state capitol so much, I thought it would be fun for us to take in another one and compare (can we say writing assingment?  Shhhhh!  They don't know it yet!).  We could have taken a guided tour, but it was going to be too structured for some little guy who needed a nap ;) We grabbed a self-guided tour book and it took us up to the 5th floor to work our way back down again.  We exited the elevator, started taking in the elegance of the dome and met this gal who volunteered to take our picture.  I don't get to have my pics taken with the kiddos much on our field trips, so it was a treat! 

Turns out it wasn't just another person who took our picture, it was State Senator Anastasia Pittman!  She took us to the Senate chambers, told us fun stories about the goings-on there and then took us back to her office and introduced us to a WWII vet, her lovely assistant and her intern. She gave us lots of handouts for the kids about the workings of the Oklahoma government, and this excellent book on African-American history in Oklahoma (um, that was right up my alley with my research on the US Colored Troops!).  Ms. Pittman was an excellent ambassador for Oklahoma!  Her love for her work and her state just poured from her :) When our tour was all said and done Mookie declared her favorite part of the capitol was meeting the Senator!
 

The whole thing was lovely.  Bubby wanted to look at every.single.piece.of.art.  And he may have gotten it done :)

No governor here, but we did get to see her in conference via a door that was open to the rotunda!  Super cool!  I don't know how many times I've been to the Kansas State capitol, but I've never seen the governor while we were there or chatted with a state representative. 
  On our way out we checked out the working oil well on the grounds. 

  That evening we got to revisit a OKC favorite, Hideaway Pizza. Yum!

  Today we started with Will Rogers Gardens.  One of Hubby's hobbys is researching the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) in Kansas.   The CCC was involved in establishing this park, so we had to take it in!

   Our next stop was the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. It has been 3 years, almost exactly since we'd been and Mookie especially was excited to go back. 

The galleries were fantastic.  They are just stuffed full of western and cowboy heritage! They're set up a little funky, and so there's not a great flow from one end of the exhibits to the next.
  They have a great kids play area with lots of hands on activities...

Definitely worth the second trip.  If we get back to OKC, Bubby's requested stop is the Osteology Museum!  I definitely see that in our future :)

Bubby and Buffalo Bill

See you later Oklahoma!