St. Patty's Day Field Trip

We don't celebrate St. Patty's Day in a big way around here. However, the kids all made sure to put on green clothes today and they even dressed baby Isaac in green. I grabbed a green shirt to wear this morning only because it was the first thing I saw and I was in a hurry. It wasn't until I went into the kitchen and heard all the green clothes hubbub going on that I realized I had made the right choice in my own attire.

The kids and I went about our day as usual, but then I received a call from Matt who said he planned to take the rest of the day off of work so that he could take the family on a little impromptu field trip. I got off the phone and announced that Daddy would be taking the family to a surprise location. Cheers erupted. I never miss an opportunity like that to get a little chore mileage out of the kids. They gladly picked up a few messes, cleaned out the van, ate their lunches and packed snacks while they waited for Daddy to come home and pick us up.

When Daddy arrived, we all loaded into the van and after the obligatory three or so trips back into the house to get things we'd forgotten (at least we hadn't left the driveway yet), we were off. We traveled to the Whitman Mission. I haven't been there since I was in sixth grade. Honestly, I don't have any memories of the mission itself, just all the build up in our social studies course weeks before my class made the field trip.
Flash forward almost thirty years. I now can see why I don't have any memories of the place. There just isn't a whole lot to see. When we arrived at the mission this afternoon, we watched a short video and toured the one room museum. We then went outdoors and walked the grounds. No actual buildings remain, just brick laid in the ground to outline the dimensions of the original buildings. The signs along the path certainly look like they could have been there thirty years ago and the audio that accompanies each sign wasn't as PC sounding as I expected, so I surmised that they are pretty old, too.
The last couple of years, Matt and I have stayed at the Marcus Whitman Hotel in Walla Walla for our little annual getaway. On the second floor of the hotel, a series of paintings hangs on the walls which describe the life of the Whitmans. I think having this history in our minds was helpful to us as we toured the grounds of the mission today and I wish our kids would have had the benefit of that history as well.

However, Daddy, as always, was a good historian. He asked the kids many questions and got them thinking. Near the end of the tour, he asked the kids if they thought that Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were martyrs for Christ and they all answered in the affirmative.Something that really struck me today was how the Lord redeemed a tragic situation which occurred very early in the Whitmans' work at the mission. They lost their 27 month old daughter when she drowned in the river that ran through the property. However, several years later, the Whitmans adopted seven children (including a 5 month old baby) whose parents died as the family was traveling West. Yet, tragically, two of those boys were killed by the Cayuse in the massacre (and 1 died of measles) and the other four were obviously orphaned yet again when the Whitmans themselves were among those murdered.
At one point I commented to Matt that if they replicated the buildings on the property (similar to Ft. Clatsop), the mission might be a bit more interesting. Of course he said that all of that costs money. I countered that then they could charge more than $3 per adult (kids 16 & under are free). But then again, the whole place is kind of a downer and maybe having buildings to explore wouldn't help that.
Our kids had a great time, however, and didn't want to leave, or at least they didn't want to go home so soon, so we loaded into the van and Matt drove us around the countryside. At one point, we came upon a feedlot and one of the kids exclaimed, "Oh look! A ranch!" to which Joel replied, "I hope we see a cowboy! Oh! I bringed my cowboy hat!"

We drove on Stateline Road for awhile, then Matt stopped the car so that the kids could run back and forth between Oregon and Washington and so that they could spit from one state to the other.

Then we drove home and ate the beef stew that had been simmering in the oven all afternoon. I had to ditch my plan of making Irish soda bread as we got back to the house too late, but we did have Tillamook mint ice cream for dessert. Daddy asked the kids questions about St. Patrick and I thought about how St. Patrick and the Whitmans were similar in that they both sought to bring Christ to those who didn't know Him. So, in fact, our little field trip ended up being an appropriate activity for St. Patrick's Day.