Science Center

Saturday before last (not last Saturday when I spent the day reading) we took the kids, a friend, and our niece to the Science Center.  This is basically an all day trip since it is quite a drive from our house, but was definitely worth it in terms of learning and creating memories as a family.  Since my last full of pictures post is about to scroll of the bottom, I figured today is a good day to share the day with you.

First we saw a 3D movie in the Imax theater--the History of Flight.  My husband figured it would be a giant Boeing commercial, and maybe it was, but I thought it was super cool.  The kids also enjoyed it, and Sunflower watched the first 10 minutes with utter fascination and attention trying to reach out and touch the birds as they flew by.  10 minutes of attention from Sunflower is pretty darn good, but after that she was a little distracting and kept taking her dad's 3D glasses (which may be why he didn't like it quite as much!).

Sunflower waiting for the movie.

  Then we explored some of the exhibits.

Huckleberry and SnapDragon at the Giant Table

We split Huckleberry in half and duplicated him; I mean there was a mirror.

Then there was a whole room about bugs.  I moved past it immediately and left the kids with Oak and our friend, so all pictures including bugs came from our friend's iPhone.

SnapDragon looking in a contraption that spun and shows the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly.

The following video is Sunflower being offered the chance to PET a Hissing Cockroach.

It makes me laugh.  No hissy fit or girlish screams, just security in who she is and what she does or does not want to do.  

SnapDragon putting together puzzle ants.

Riding a Giant Caterpillar. 

Finally they caught up with me in the butterfly house where I had been enjoying myself taking lots of pictures.  I also tried out my camera's macro setting, but I need to research what that means a little more.  It appeared to mean that my camera was then incapable of focusing for a while, even when I turned back to my normal setting.  I know that isn't what it is supposed to do!

One of my many shots.  I might share more in another post, but for now this will have to do.  I love butterflies.

One particularly tenacious butterfly clung to Huckleberry as he walked 20 feet to make sure I saw it.

My fashion model.

Then after working on some puzzles in the MindBender Exhibit (it was like a live Professor Layton game!) we took the monorail to get some lunch.  Huckleberry will have to give up going on the monorail on his field trip next month so we can get on the road to travel to his grandma's funeral, so riding it now seemed only fitting.  They all loved it.  (My 15 year old niece is in all the other pictures I took and I don't have her or her parents permission to post them, so you'll have to be satisfied with Sunflower.)

Looking at the city as it goes by.  Do you see Sunflower's reflection? I'm kind of proud of this picture.

 Then some more exhibits including more time solving puzzles in the MindBender room before heading home.

Sunflower and Oak.  This one actually happened before lunch, but I forgot and changing order in Blogger is hard.

Making a craft while the non-littles solved puzzles.

Testing center of gravity.  Sunflower did the best by lying flat on her tummy and pushing the button with her nose over and over.  She was so proud of her accomplishment!

Seeing how long SnapDragon could hang.  Supposed to be an arm curl, but Oak said this was good enough.  Ha!  We'll see if good enough works with school work.  I did not attempt this feat, though all the kids did.  I had to take pictures.

So that was our day at the Science Center.  It was really pretty neat; the only thing that would have made it better is if none of those other people had been there and our little group of 7 could have worked on the puzzles all on our own.  However, we were exhausted when we got home as you might be able to guess since it took me 9 days to upload the photos.