Postcards Across the Nation

Today we received four postcards. The most interesting thing was that they spanned the United States from the west coast, specifically Sand Diego to Saint Paul Minnesota and continuing on to Amherst Massachusetts. Both my children pointed out the postcards in the mail and we went through them before our evening walk. B was thrilled when she found San Diego on the map and she discovered that there is a Gulf of California and a State also named California. Okay I admit I steered her towards San Diego by telling her it was near Mexico. She did know where Mexico was, not bad for a 6 year old.

My son managed to find the Gaslamp Quarter on the map. He came up with many ideas for why it was called the Gaslamp Quarter. Oddly it never occurred to him that the street lights were lit with gas. Even when I told him that it took him some convincing to get him to believe it. I told them about what I remember from my visit to San Diego, I got a glimpse of the ocean from my Great Uncle Ewald's house. Funny that is all I really remember.

Then my friend Genny sent the kids two postcards from completely different part of the United States. The first one was from Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is a beautiful photo with a waxing crescent moon in the sky. Genny was there for a conference and ze did an excellent job of describing what was in the postcard. P figured out the name of the river in the postcard by using names of local landmarks. He is really quite a smart boy.

The fourth postcard was also from Genny. This time it was from where ze works. The tall building on the front of the postcard is the library on campus. B was excited that a library could be so tall and she wants to go there. She loves to read and images of 26 floors of books even made my heart skip a beat or two. The campus is in Amherst, Massachusetts, a place we have been as a family. Though we went to the Eric Carl Museum. That is a wonderful museum and we saw original illustrations from "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". We are planning on going back so B may get her wish and go to the 26 story library.

Our journey from the west coast to east coast concluded and we ventured outside for our evening walk. As we walked around the neighborhood we talked about other places we would like to get postcards from. P recalled that we have not had any postcards from Australia or Africa. Yikes, I need to get busy and find some people who live there.