Look Mom!  No braces!!

Here is my before and after!!

He popped my braces off in about ten seconds!! 

And it tasted awful!  

But I got this really cool rainbow retainer!!

And I ended up wth the most beautiful pearly whites!!  

My 4th Grade Field Trip to Sacramento!!

My 4th grade class took a field trip to Sacramento and it was so awesome!!  I had been looking forward to this field trip all year and it was as fun as I imagined it would be!  We did so many fun things I hope I can tell you about everything!
Our morning started off super early at the airport... but that didn't stop me and Keira from doing gymnastics.

and this is me with Keira, Emily, Stella and Auden all waiting to get on the plane!

Super cool on the plane...

So here's where we started... at the Capitol building.  My friend Jack's Mom works there so we got a super duper VIP tour.

This bear is right in the front hallway and was donated by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  There isn't a real bear in there tho.  And I preferred to take a photo with it's butt than with it's face.

Also in the hallway they had these really cool windows inside with collages that represented each area of California...

Our first stop inside was the press room.  This is where all the press and newspapers gather to hear about the budget and things like that.  Each seat is assigned to the newspapers in order of seniority, basically.  I am sitting in the front row at the desk of the Sacramento Bee.

And here's my class at the podium!  We had one rule:  Don't touch the microphone!!

Then we moved on to the assembly hearing room.  This is where one would go if they wanted to pass a bill.  Remember that School House Rock "I'm just a bill... " Well, here's where it starts.  The senate introduces the bill here to be discussed by the committee and voted on...

If the bill passes, then it comes here to the assembly floor for a second vote and if approved then it is sent to the Governor where it can be approved again, or vetoed.
Many laws pass but never actually make it into the system for lack of funding.

This legislature floor has a desk for each senator and is marked either republican or democrat.  These are the original desks that have been here since the 1800's and now they are given a computer at each desk so they can read about the bills being presented.

And there is a list on the wall with the names of each of the senators.

We got to approach the front and take a school photo.  

They even had our school name up on the board!!  You can see it here in this photo I clearly didn't want to take with my mom.

One cool thing... So, way back when they discovered that this particular building was very unsafe and needed to be torn down and rebuilt.  Which it was.  And the architect built a super ornate ceiling with leaves all around.

But in one space on the ceiling instead of a leaf he put a gargoyle!!  Now just standing there you'd never even know it or even be able to find it, but they showed us where it was!!  As a matter of fact, they don't even know who the architect was who did this or why!!

Pretty cool.

In addition to the gargoyle, there were some really interesting things both inside and outside of the building.  

Like this picture of me with my friends Mia and Mia!

 And here are just a few of the neat things we saw.... 

Along with the a view of downtown and some shots of the rose garden...

Then we moved on to old town Sacramento and the Railroad museum.  I didn't happen to take any photos there but it was still pretty cool.  There was one sleeper train that actually felt like it was moving!!  And it had this crazy mannequin sleeping in one of the cars.
Anyway, here's a shot of my friends Keira and Ellise outside the museum.

And we stopped at this donut shop that make mini-donuts on the spot and they were DELICIOUS!!
Like, super scary eat a million donuts delicious.  I only ate 2 though.

After that, no rest for the weary, we went to Sutter's Fort and went on a scavenger hut!!

This is where all the gold miners brought there gold for John Sutter to examine and tell them what it's worth.  We could see small stores and supply stores all around where they could then use the money from their gold to buy things.

Following that we finally made it to the camp grounds in Coloma.

Our cabins were so cool!  I loved it!!  

And I shared a tent with Keira and our moms.

It was really beautiful there and it was right on the American River.

We learned about some cool things while we were there too, like tin smithing.

This lady gave us a (sorta) long lecture about what it was used for and how they made tools and cooking utensils and pots and pans...

and then we were given hammers and nails to do our own tin smithing art project.

Later that night after dinner we had a nice fire and made s'mores!!

In the freezing misty morning we all got up and had a freshly cooked breakfast... pancakes and eggs and cereal and it was yummy.

Then we hung around for a bit chatting 

while all the grown up charged up their electronics and answered emails and texts... priorities!!

Even Mr. Fleming, the principal, needed a little bit of iPad time.

There was a little mock-up town where I threw my mom in jail for drinking at the saloon (not really)....

But then she threw all of us in jail too.

Here's another shot of Mr. Fleming with my mom.  He is the one who put together this whole trip!!  And thanks to him it was really awesome.  Yay Mr. Fleming!

 Anyway, we did some gold panning while we were there too.  This was one of my FAVORITE parts!!

We found so many beautiful gems and garnets in the water!!  

Even my mom did some panning and found this GIANT piece of gold!!  Just FOOLing!  It's just pyrite, fool's gold.  But it's still really pretty and sparkly!!

Then we hopped on the bus and left the campsite.  Byyyye Coloma cool campsite!!

We headed over to one of the state parks where we learned all about the gold panners and how they would pack up their pioneer wagons and travel for months and months across the United States to California.  We even packed up our own wagon!!

And we took a little hike up to a small theater where we saw a play about the gold miners as well.  It was the story of John Sutter, who never actually discovered gold himself.   It was actually the guy who was building the mill for John Sutter, named James Marshall.  Then thousands of people came to California to pan for gold and claim land and sell supplies to the prospectors.  It was pretty interesting.

Afterwards we headed down to the American River to where they actually did their gold panning!!

AND... that was that.  We headed over to Joe's Crab Shack for a bite to eat before we hopped on the plane and headed home.  It was such a great field trip and we learned so much!!  I loved the camping and the gold panning and just about everything.  Now I can't wait for the 5th grade field trip!!