College of the Ozarks

Wednesday of spring break was another big shopping day. We hit Mardel, Hobby Lobby, Target and the dance supply store. It was a brutal day :-) I took no photos. The highlight of my day was getting to go out for coffee that night with some friends from high school. It was so nice to sit and chat with them for a while!

On Friday we all loaded up with my mom and dad for a trip to College of the Ozarks. The main point of this trip was to take the kids to the Ralph Foster Museum "The Smithsonian of the Ozarks"...
One of the main things about the museum that I remembered from my youth, was the actual truck from the Beverly Hillbillies tv show...
The kids had never heard of the show before! So my dad found some episodes on youtube and showed them. They thought that they were pretty funny... we watched the golf episode and they still make references to it. We may have to find them on dvd.

Another thing I remembered was the Rose O'Neill display with all of the Kewpie dolls...
My kids had never heard of Kewpie dolls before... sigh.

Here they are typing out messages in Morse Code...
(they had heard of Morse Code before)

After spending quite a bit of time in the museum, we drove through campus to the Edwards Mill...
It's an actual working mill, run by a waterwheel (it wasn't operating the day we were there). The students grind grain there to sell.
Upstairs is a weaving studio where we saw beautiful projects on the looms. Those projects are also for sale at the mill. Clara bought a pretty little woven bookmark as a souvenir.

After looking around inside, we headed outside to look at the waterwheel.

We all liked this arrow in the stonework by the stairs...
The kids by the wheel...
Alex communing with the ducks and swans...

Next door were the greenhouses...The orchid greenhouse...
And finally, we headed over to the Keeter Center for lunch.

College of the Ozarks is a really neat campus. It's nickname is Hard Work U, since there is no tuition. Instead, students work their way through college at different on campus industries.

It was a great outing... but our day wasn't over yet!

TOTALLY UNRELATED NEWS:
So proud of the girl and so excited for her!!! She just found out yesterday that the Battle of the Books team that she's on made it to the citywide finals!!! Go Clara!!