Playing at the "far away" museum

Oliver has the week off from school, and we've been having so much fun with him at home. :-) When I first told him that he had a break from school coming up, one of the first things he said that he wanted to do was go to the "far away" children's museum. We decided to go today, and it was our best visit yet! Everyone was so well behaved, the museum was not crowded at all, and we just had a great time.

And as always, I'm amazed at how well Theodore does in the car, skipping his usual nap and meal times, etc. It definitely makes things easier for me. :-)

Playing at the museum

This morning the kiddos were up super early (thank you, daylight savings time), it was dreary looking outside, and we needed something fun to do, so we took a spur-of-the-moment trip to the children's museum.

The kids did the usual things first . . . light pegs, trains, milking the cow, hanging like bats, pretending to be veterinarians, cooking, etc.





Then we checked out the new dino exhibit. It was pretty fun! Neither of my kids are super into dinosaurs right now (or have ever been), but they enjoyed looking at the kid-height replicas, dressing in dinosaur costumes, sitting in a dinosaur nest, digging for fossils, playing with dinosaurs, tracing, and drawing.

I kid you not -- Buttercup had her fingers in the T-rex's nostrils about 0.2 seconds before I took this picture. She does this all the time and I will get evidence of it some day!!


I know her face is saying, "Mom, why did you make me wear this?!!" but honestly she really did this to herself. :-)




Oliver's awesome dinosaur drawing:




Building a food chain:


We ended our visit with Buttercup's favorite and Oliver's least favorite -- story and music time! I'm with Oliver on this one . . . story time at the museum is usually boring, but this morning the museum hosted Staci Gray, who is one of the best kids' entertainers I've seen. She is animated, lively, engaging and knows how to please a crowd of wily toddlers and preschoolers!


And then there were bubbles. Lots and lots of bubbles. :-)

Pictures from the "far away" museum

Pictures from the museum

We visited the children's museum in New Braunfels (aka the "far away museum", as the kids call it) again last week, for probably the last time until after the baby is born. It's such a fun museum, and I love that it's all one level, so Oliver can go and do his thing while I keep track of the 2 year old, who is more prone to picking fights with other kids. ;-) It's at least an hour drive for us, so I try to stay as long as possible to make sure the kids can have as much fun as they want. This visit, we stayed until 2:00pm -- well into naptime! -- and ended up getting stuck in afternoon traffic on the way home, which made for a really long day. But the kids held it together well and had a great time, as usual.

Here are some pictures! (Sorry for the poor quality, I only had my phone with me.)

A visit to a new museum

Today we went on a mini road trip! There's another highly-recommended children's museum about an hour from us, so we visited today to see it for ourselves. There are some exhibits/play stations very similar to what is available at "our" museum, but there were some really nice, new-to-us exhibits that the kids and I really enjoyed exploring. Oliver had so many favorites that he couldn't choose just one (although I think he liked the outdoor water play area the best), and Buttercup's favorite was the grocery store (complete with child-size metal grocery carts!!). It's a great place, and we are definitely going back some time in the (near) future!

Here are some (okay, a lot of) photos from our visit: