We stayed an extra night in San Antonio because leaving Sunday afternoon was too hard. Since Theresa had to actually get up and go to work this morning, it was much easier to leave! And since we left after breakfast, the kids got a good power nap in the car before arriving back up in North Texas. Since it is still super hot, we opted for a day at the museum to stay inside.
We brought the boys here last year and they loved it! Thomas always asks about this museum, so he was super excited to come back. He even posed with the dinosaur this year and roared for me! :)
They didn't have this super awesome caterpillar last year and I thought it looked really neat. No time to enjoy it though - you can just barely see Thomas near the museum steps. He was not waiting for his momma to appreciate anything but going inside!
Since it was just September 11th, I found the museum tribute to the World Trade Centers to be even more meaningful. This piece is 36' long, so I couldn't get it all in one photo. It was from Tower One and they have a little video that plays about it. It's all in first person, so it says things like "I was on the 101-103 floor. I was hit at 8:46."
It was a reminder of a very sad day. But I liked the tribute to it. And I like that they left the marked on "SAVE" on the piece.
Off to the kids area and happier times! Henry was off to the ambulance to start rescuing people. Or, you know, playing with the lights and sirens...
He was very focused on it though!
Thomas found the construction gear and then proceeded to walk around to different exhibits and holding up his stop sign to keep me from following him. Ha!
But even construction guys need groceries. I tried to convince him he could shop easier if he wasn't holding a stop sign, but that was not going to happen. I think he only gave up the hard hat because it kept falling off. :)
Back at their favorite grocery store! The play area that all other museums are judged by. I honestly contemplating starting a campaign to get one installed at our local museum. They love it sooooo much! But there's really not room in the kid's area at our museum. Though I've noticed the museum is expanding. Is it too much to hope for a pretend grocery store?!?
Grandpa met us at the museum to get in a little more play time with his two favorite little guys. Thomas was showing him how to get the big wheels to turn by spraying the flaps on the side. (I'm pretty sure dad knew, but he went along with the instructions!)
We couldn't really figure out what we were supposed to do with this water table... Some of the blue "walls" had holes in them, but the water never got high enough to go through the holes. It was beyond us, but we did managed to build up a little water and send the balls rushing down the table a few times.
This one we figure out just fine! Though it was a little hard for the boys to pull / push the water pipes on their own, so we helped them shoot the balls up in the air!
Thomas had a blast with this one. There were holes that shot water up and you could put pipes in the holes to make the water go everywhere. Thomas wasn't paying enough attention and partialy doused himself at least once. He still thought the table was awesome though! You can't see the whole tall & twisty pipe I built, but you can see the water on the far right coming back down from it. It was pretty rickety engineering, but it worked!
Dad and Thomas built this big ramp for rolling the balls down. His engineering was much sturdier than mine was! And it was quite the hit of the playground, all of the kids were stealing balls from the water table to roll down the "roller coaster"!
As we were leaving, we found the slightly older kids area and this giant Light Brite. I thought Aunt Theresa would like to see what the boys designed!
Totally kidding - this partially completed Bevo was already there, they were just moving other random pieces around. :)
And last but not least, riding the giant Bumpersaurus in the gift shop. Not surprisingly, they had a blast at the museum and are already asking when we are going back! :)