I haven't posted in a long time now! My oldest is in college now (eek!) and I finally have a little free time to myself again. I thought I would start posting about the cool trips we are either going on or planning to in the future, on our awesome homeschooling journey :)

We traveled to Birmingham, AL last month and holy cow was it a blast (and affordable!). I took my mom and my twins, and thanks to our Tellus Science Center membership we were able to visit the McWane Science center and the Southern Museum of Flight for free! The science center is SOOOOOO COOL! Check it out here: http://www.mcwane.org/. We all had a great time and spent hours exploring the exhibits there (pretty sure we spent 4 hours on the dot there!) and then splurged and ate in the cafe (I ate my own gf food I brought). The flight museum was very educational, my kids loved seeing the planes made from kits over the years, but especially enjoyed the military history room. We ran into the gentleman who runs field trips there, and he gave us a great tour of the military area. My kids learned so much! I want to go back when they are older and have a more thorough understanding of the wars we've been involved in and such. We also stopped at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens (which is always free yay!) and walked around through the beautiful scenery. We didn't stay long because it was HOT and I didn't want to get sunburnt, but holy cow did I feel like Alice in the queen's roses, the rose garden was so big and pretty! We did stop to see the Vulcan, a must see for tourists.

The last thing we did was visit the Barber Motorsports Museum, and whoa is that place big. Motorcycles everywhere! If you have a motorcycle enthusiast in your family, go. Just go. It's awesome.

Since we got into every attraction but one for free, we splurged and spent $102 on an overnight stay at the Drury Inn Grandview. The kids LOVED it! The pool is half indoors half outdoors, so even in the rainy weather they were able to swim. The hot tub is SUPER FUN, and we were down there alone the night we stayed (because we homeschool and can travel anytime haha). The hotel offers complimentary dinner, breakfast, and popcorn and drinks all evening too! We brought our roku stick and watched movies on netflix while eating popcorn and it was truly an enjoyable stay for us. I am going to look for Drury Inns for every trip now!

I highly recommend making the trip if you have an ASTC reciprocal membership, and kiddos who enjoy science museums. Birmingham isn't the prettiest city, and the flight museum isn't in the prettiest part of town, but be smart and don't leave ipads sitting out in your car and use good judgement and you'll have a blast! Next trip, we plan to check out the Birmingham Zoo and want to leave time for a little out of the way travel to one of the many National Parks in Alabama. We love the junior ranger program and want to earn more badges and learn more about our world!