My California board on Pinterest

Do you know about the map feature on Pinterest? I knew about it, but really hadn't done anything with it until this week.

Right now, I have 30 pins on my California Pinterest board. This week, I went through and added the location to each of my pins. I have to say, it is really cool to see all of the locations on a map on my Pinterest board. And we have visited each of the destinations at least once. I know there are many more locations I can pin on this board, so if you live in California, or if you plan on visiting California, or if you are looking for field trip ideas in California, be sure to follow my California Pinterest board. 

Do you have a Pinterest board with a map? 

Field Trip! – Monterey Bay Aquarium

Want to know a secret?

I have never paid admission to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium!

How do you do that you ask?

We have always gone on a Home School Day!

Now I know the Home School Days are full for this year, they usually open up reservations for their Home School Days in October. Be sure to just check back on their web site in the fall and plan your day out my the ocean!

For a while, we had been so many times that I think my kids could give a guided tour of the aquarium to just about anyone. But how can you blame me? Admission for our family of four would have cost almost $140, just for one day!

Anyway, we took a break from the aquarium for a couple of years, but I wanted to make sure that we included a trip this year since Kelsey is studying swimming creatures from the fifth day of creation.

I ended up taking over 100 pictures, but narrowed it down to just over 20 that I really liked. Here are a few of my favorites to share with you:

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Where do you like to go for field trips with your family?

The Walt Disney Family Museum

Today our family drove into the city (San Francisco) for a day trip to

The Walt Disney Family Museum

.

 The museum is located on the grounds of

The Presidio

which is a beautiful area in San Francisco.

 We started off in the hands on studio where Kev and Matthew worked on a stop motion video with Kelsey looking on.

 The subject of the movie short, very colorful!

 While they were creating, I took a walk around and found a couple of fun things to photograph. Wouldn't this look great on someone's bedroom wall?

 Kev's dream desk...animation desk at Disney!

 Matthew ended up working on his little short by himself

 One of the very few things I was able to photograph in the lobby area

 A replica of the apartment that sits above the fire station at Disneyland. While we were at the museum, we watched an hour long movie about Walt and his love for Christmas. This was included with the admission price. After the movie, we toured the museum. Like a lot of museums of this type, no photography was allowed.

We learned a lot about Walt's early life, saw a lot of pencil sketches that had been saved, and saw many old family photos. The museum had many different rooms filled with a lot of history and artwork. Toward the end of the museum, there was a large model of Disneyland with a few things that I remember from my first trip a long time ago.

 I was able to take this picture from inside the museum. It was a beautiful clear day!

 Once we were outside the museum, I took just a couple more photos...

Wish I could grow these at my house!

Again, I took these photos in RAW and did a quick edit in Lightroom. I was really hoping that a book that I had ordered would have arrived today to help me to establish a good workflow in Lightroom. Guess I will need to wait until next week.

This trip will be a great topic for my next letter to my Compassion kids! And I will be sure to get some of the photos printed to send to them. Which photos do you think I should send?