April 23 – “An actual date”

I woke up with a really sore and swollen left knee, I suppose from my yard work efforts the day before.  Chris woke up with her usual sore and tight right leg from her I-band-itis, or whatever they call it in medical terms.  But between us, we figured we had one good set of legs, so we decided what we needed was some exercise.  And what better way to get the ol’ legs moving that to go on a date.  Yep, an actual date.

We have season passes to Moody Gardens, and Chris has been wanting to go to the Imax theater over there, so that was a good place to start.  I know.  Where’s the walking in watching a movie for an hour?  But we would have to walk in from the parking lot and up all those stairs.  That counts.  There were very few cars in said parking lot, though, and Chris actually parked fairly close to the front door.  We wondered what was going on elsewhere that no one was at Moody Gardens.  But as for us, we trudged on and made our way in to the theater.  No line at all to get in, and only about ten others in the whole huge place.  We settled in with our 3D glasses and waited for the show to begin. 

Do you know why they don’t tell you to put on the glasses until the lights are out?  We were playing with them before the feature began.  If you put them on with the light on, the entire right eye is completely blacked out.  Is it a principle of 3D technology that it is easier to fool one eye – one side of your brain?  Indeed a query to ponder. 

Our reverie was grossly imposed upon just as the movie was about to start.  The entry doors opened and a flood of elementary-aged youngsters began to file in.  They completely filled the row in front of us and didn’t stop there.  I have no idea how many finally made their appearance, but the place was suddenly bursting at the seams.  It was fun to watch the kids watch the 3D movie, though.  More than once they reached out to try and touch something that seemed so close yet was so far away. 

The movie itself was a visit to some of the National Parks.  Apparently this is National Parks Week.  We joined via video a team of crazy people who did weird things like climb Devil’s Tower and run up mountains and worst of all … go camping in between.  One good thing … now that we’ve seen it we don’t actually have to go there, right?  Yeah, didn’t work with Chris, either.  Now she has even more places to see on her bucket list. 

After the movie we actually did do some walking.  We decided to make our way through the Rain Forest Pyramid.  It was very different from the last time I was in there, which would have been sometime before Hurricane Ike, so at least eight years ago.  We saw a monkey.  And a little deer.  We even saw one monkey pretending to be a two-toed sloth.  We never found the actual sloth, though.  The bats were very active.  The otter was chewing on her own foot for some reason.  Gotta love those otters.  The komodo dragon was roaming around in his habitat.  There was a netted area for the Jurassic butterflies that Moody Gardens has become famous for releasing to terrorize the island every so often.  We heard part of the teaching on the rays swimming in the pond area.  I liked the humongous coelacanth-looking fish that was swimming around.  The birds, as ever were making lots of racket.  All in all it is still a fascinating experience, made somewhat more so by the installation of a makeshift air conditioning system that blew cool air at the walkways.  They must have had too many people pass out from the heat.  It didn’t seem to be affecting the creatures, though. 

As we left we noticed one other thing.  The place was suddenly packed.  There were school children everywhere.  There were families making their way between the lines of matching t-shirted youngsters.  The parking lot was almost full.  What a difference an hour or two made.  And the reason behind the sudden influx of attenders?  Yesterday was Earth Day.  Can’t beat a great opportunity like that for that most awesome of reasons to skip school … Field Trip!

Mark 8:35 says, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

Father, take care of all those little guys who are learning every day.  And walk with their teachers as they work with them.  Amen.