Quality Family Time Revisiting a Museum

This is a quote attributed to Audrey Hepburn
The image of the Washington Monument was obtained from Geek Philosopher.

Recently, my husband and I went to school to watch our 10 year old daughter give a report on the Collier Logging Museum.  The assignment was to write and give an oral report on something about Oregon, so she chose to go to the Logging Museum.

On Mother’s day, our family went to the museum and took a tour with a wonderful tour guide who inspired her to write a great report about the museum. Check out her report here (Please remember she is only 10, so if you decide to comment, please be kind!).

The tour guide even gave her some postcards to show her class.  What a wonderful day and a lovely blast to the past for me. When I was a teenager, my Dad took my sister and I to the Collier Logging museum.  Years later, my husband and I brought my older daughter when she was a toddler during a living days re-enactment, when people were actually showing how a lot of the old equipment used to work. 

Click Here Check Out M y Gallery of Photos From Collier Logging Museum 

This visit was different for me. It was the first time I had gone there since being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia almost ten years ago and I was worried about being able to handle it.  The museum is outdoors and requires a great deal of walking to visit all of the exhibits.  But I knew how important this was to my family and especially my daughter, so I carefully didn’t do much prior to the trip and ended up having a lovely afternoon.

I am so happy that I was able to sit in the car for the drive there and back and be able to walk around the outdoor museum.  Fibromyalgia has left me unable to do so many things, but I find that I appreciate the things I am able to do so much more than I ever did before. Going to the museum again, helping my daughter design her poster, create her diorama, and then getting to watch her perform it at school was a major highlight of this month. 

Prioritizing is difficult when you only have so much strength to draw upon, but I will never regret putting the household responsibilities on hold for a few weeks to help my daughter accomplish her project.

 

Ultimately, I think it is important to recognize that the housework could wait, but the moments over the last few weeks with my daughter working on this project cannot be replaced.  The family day trip of going to the museum created memories for all of us that will be priceless.  Or in my case, the price of excruciating pain for a few days, was absolutely worth the cost!

The Collier Logging Museum is a lot of  fun, if you happen to be in Southern Oregon and have the opportunity to go there, you should certainly consider it!  Here is a link to the Collier Logging Museum website.

Here is a thought for my Fibromyalgia Friends: Try to revisit a place that you once enjoyed, but are avoiding because of the pain.  We are all at various stages of coping with Fibromyalgia and each of us only have so much strength to draw upon, but we can revisit by looking at pictures of it, talking about it, or actually going and doing it again.

My inspiration for today is a quote from Audrey Hepburn. “Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once.”