My daughter felt so much better when she awoke this morning and thankfully was fever-free. Good thing since we were to spend the day at one of our local museums, the Franklin Institute. The museum holds periodic homeschool workshops and if our schedule permits, we try and attend those as they are quite informative and interesting.

So, upon arrival to the museum this morning, my oldest son joined along side the other students participating in the “spy” workshop, and the other three children and I spent the day walking through the exhibits and seeing the various demonstrations. The institute was holding a “weather” demonstration at 11:30. I was actually looking forward to the instruction because weather/natural disasters are the focus of our Legos club that I’m coaching. I thought the kids might learn some new things about weather, so we went to the third floor hall to listen. Fortunately for us, one of the meteorologists from CBS3 news in Phili, Steve Strouss, was helping to lead the discussion on weather. The session lasted about 20 minutes, and the kids were able to see some very interesting demonstrations such as making a cloud, hearing thunder and seeing lightning, feeling the cold air stream, and observing convection and evaporation in action. These kinds of demos I cannot replicate in my kitchen! Good stuff..Once our time had concluded, Mr. Strouss asked if there were any questions from the audience, so I asked him if the station gave tours to the public. He responded with “not usually,”etc, but then went on to say that he would help us today by giving us a tour if we could be at the station later in the afternoon. You can imagine that I was very excited for my children to have this kind of opportunity for a behind-the-scenes tour, and I was a little giddy myself. We spent the rest of the afternoon touring the museum until it was time to walk to the T.V. station. The distance was about 6 blocks which we were happy to do. I love walking the streets of Philadelphia seeing the historical buildings. Such character.

When we arrived at CBS3, the security guard let us in and told us Mr. Strouss (Steve) was expecting our arrival. I signed myself and the children in, and we waited for my girlfriend to arrive with her children. (She had also been at the demonstration.) I then learned that Steve was really the coordinator of the weather teams, so meteorology was only part of his skills set. Steve kindly met us in the lobby and immediately began our tour. I loved every minute of it, and the kids did, too. We saw part of their live news report taped along with meeting many familiar faces such as Pat Ciarrocchi, Carol Erikson, Natasha Brown, and Chris May. Steve showed us different sets, the green room, the make-up room, and the many rooms of computer terminals. Everyone we met went out of their way to say “hello” to the children and couldn’t have been nicer. I truly could not have asked for anything better, especially since I didn’t plan any of it! It serves to be at the right place at the right time. The pictures below tell the story..

Some comments from my children on the ride home to NJ:

“That tour made the entire day.”

“I want to be like Mr. Strouss.”

“I want Mr. Strouss’s job.”

“Mom, can we watch the CBS3 weather station instead of the weather channel now?” (I, of course, responded with a “yes”.

Well, it’s evening again and again, I’m exhausted. Tomorrow is staring me in the face, so I must prep for academics and robotics club and soccer and gymnastics and that’s just tomorrow.