A Day of Discovery

This past weekend was the first weekend in three weeks that everyone in our household was well and we wanted to do a fun family outing.  Dylan fell in love with Discovery Place when we went several weeks ago and kept asking to go back and show Daddy the big museum.  So Saturday morning the four of us took off to spend some time at Discovery Place.

Disappointed that we didn't see the pirate exhibit last time, "Shipwreck: Pirates and Treasure", we made this our first priority.  We found the exhibit was more about undersea exploration of shipwrecks than pirates, but it was very interesting and kept the attention of the kids pretty well.  One of the neatest things that we experienced in this exhibit was standing in these glass hurricane tubes to experience winds up to 80mph - a category 1 hurricane.  We didn't allow Zoe to get in the hurricane tube but we allowed Dylan to go in with David.  Dylan was ready to get out when the winds hit about 45mph. 

Dylan and David coming out of the hurricane tube

Dylan enjoyed pretending to steer a boat through hurricane waters.

Dylan was interested in listening about some of the treasures that the exploration team had found

But of course Dylan's favorite thing was the pirate exhibit.  Here Dylan is posing with the pirates and pretending to be Pirate Dylan and saying "argh!"

We then moved on to the "Cool Stuff" exhibit which is where the kids and I had spent most of our time during our last visit.  This exhibit allows families to learn and  experience various physics concepts.  I'm not sure who had more fun in the exhibit - the kids or David.  Since both of us were there, we were able to allow the kids to both explore the exhibit on foot.  Pictures are worth 1000 words so I'll continue to use pictures to tell about our day.

Dylan and Zoe loved the Tennis Ball Launcher where you pulled the rope, let it go and made a tennis ball fly.  Zoe had a bit of hard time with sharing and taking turns though.

The Pulley Chairs were another favorite for both kids.  They had three different chairs that were used to show that the more times the rope was wrapped around the pulleys the easier you could lift yourself up.  Of course Dylan and Zoe both needed help from David and me to lift them up.

Dylan really enjoyed playing with different pulley systems to move gravel rocks around.  He and I stayed at this exhibit for at least thirty minutes.

Zoe's favorite exhibit was one that she created all on her own.  She swiped the cups off the exhibit and made herself comfortable on the floor.  So I plopped down on the floor in the middle of the exhibition hall with her for the next 20-30 minutes. 

Zoe  loved stacking and unstacking the cups and was having a great time.  Then she tried to pretend to drink out of one. 

This is Zoe's reaction when I told her "No! No! The cups are dirty and you can't put your mouth on them."   Zoe is quite the drama queen and tries to get her way with all this drama.

This is the look I got when she realized that she wasn't going to win this battle and I told her we would put the cups back if she put her mouth on them again.

We had a great day with just the four of us.  I love our family outings no matter where we go.  It's really nice when the kids and I get to do something along with Daddy.