I know we’ve mentioned going to Everett’s children’s museum but I’m not sure how much I’ve shared or if we’ve shared pictures yet.  I could go back through our old posts and see, but right now, the boys are on the edge of waking up and I need to write quickly.

So, in December, the boys were going STIR CRAZY.  In desperation, Joel and I thought – let’s go to the mall to walk around.  As we headed out, I thought about all the Christmas shopping that was occurring and traffic nightmare that we were about to walk into and at the last minute asked Joel to head north and go to the museum.  He was game and the boys really didn’t care.  They were just happy to be out of the house.  (By the way, Nicholas becomes quite the little non-word talker in the car).

Anyway, we arrived and started to explore.  That day we visited three rooms – the “ball” room, the foam fire engine slide room, and the water room.  On our next visit we added the money room and construction zone to our rotation.  As soon as Nicholas and Dexter spotted that they could play with ping pong balls and shoot them through an air compressed hose, they were hooked.  Dexter also discovered that he could fit a whole ping pong ball in his mouth and run like a madman which would get his mom to chase him down and pop the ball out of his mouth.  This scenario would be repeated over and over again until I finally got tired of it and moved us into the foam fire truck room.

This room has an under 5 age limit and contains a big foam fire truck complete with two slides.  The boys went wild.  Ok, Dexter went crazy wild and Nic was just super happy.  This is where I discovered that Dexter is an adrenaline junky and Nicholas is totally cautious.  Case in point.  Dexter tried to run down the slide, slipped, whacked his head and came up laughing at the bottom.  He then ran to do it all over again.  We could send him down on his stomach or butt and it wouldn’t matter – he’d go fast and furious down that slide.  He also would have walked straight off the steps had we not been there to catch him. 

Nicholas, on the other hand, always sat down at the top, scooted forward, and went down on his butt, using his feet to slow his rate of speed.  The one time I sent him down face first, he flipped himself over, slowed down and finished the ride on his bottom.

We also splashed up a storm in the water room and build and destroyed block towers in the construction zone room.  Once Joel taught Nicholas how to topple over a floor to ceiling tower that Joel had built, Nicholas attempted to take down other kids towers and succeeded once before I could stop him.

We managed to get Laura to the museum before she left and Malin has joined us too.  Both had a blast chasing boys. 

However, the worst part about going is that the boys always come back with a cold (or never ending ear infections).  I try to weigh the risks (getting sick) to the benefits (happy boys) and so far, the benefits have out weighed the risks with the exception of one time.  I think it was December 31st when Joel and I aborted our visit within 4 minutes of entering.  The place was overwhelmingly full but it wasn’t until I saw a girl leaning over a garbage can puking that I snatched up Nicholas and told Joel we were leaving.  The boys got to play at Grandma and Grandpa French’s house and terrorize Rylie (the dog) instead.  I think they were cool with that.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures of our visits!