Desert Museum-ness

A few days before my due date, we decided to hit the Desert Museum to give me a chance to walk around a bunch as well as a chance for the kids to run around and see the animals one last time before our membership expired.  The Harris Hawk demo was AWESOME!

Can you see the hummingbird?  It's right above Abby sitting on a branch.

Desert Museum Fun

Cousin love!

We decided to go out to the Desert Museum while Tom & Amy and their kids were still here. It was a good time!  

The desert really is beautiful!

Can you hear like a bat?  

After Daddy did it...everyone wanted a turn....

Joey

Allison

Jacob

Abby

Gideon

Digging for dinosaur bones!

The hummingbird house is my favorite thing about this whole place.  Isn't it beautiful!?

The Phillips Museum

The Phillips are who owned the land the Philmont Scout Ranch is on and donated to the Boy Scouts of America.  This is their old home.  It's now a museum, and it's amazing!

The long hallways with the beautiful rugs...so old fashioned and neat!

Here Mr. & Mrs. Phillips are! :)

Beautiful bed spreads!

He was quite the hunter.  His trophy room was full!

This rug scared Joey. :)

Their old piano was super cool!  They keep it tuned and let people try it out even!

Chocolate World or Bust

We had to stop...we just had to!  :)  This is in Hershey Pennsylvania.  Did you know they have a roller coaster park??  It looked fun too! Next time!  lol

They had a little "jurassic park" style ride where they tell you all about how they make their chocolate.  

It was cute and silly and informational.  

The best part was they gave you chocolate when you got off.  (they also dumped you in the biggest Hershey chocolate store you've ever seen...but that wasn't a surprise. :)

Off to the Museums!

Welcome to the Natural History Museum!  This was the first place we went. What a place!  So awesome!  It is enormous!  I think we only covered maybe 1/5 of the place.  But what we saw was absolutely fantastic!  (I think the kids are acting like birds...like the ones in the tree they were standing by.)

The dinosaur section was, of course, a hit with the kids. 

There were actual bees in there making honey! 

This thing was full of huge ants!  Dave said there was one crawling on the outside of it too, which made you feel like they were crawling all over you!  Eww!

This bug section was awesome!  We kept trying to move on after we'd been in this one section for over 20...30 minutes.  And Joey would run off in the crowd.  And yep, we found him back in the bug section every time.  (Yes, it was more than once.  :) )

We stayed there until Joey was having a meltdown that would not let up.  It was hard for him to not get to just run and go where ever HE wanted to go.  There was just too many people there.  He got lost so quickly.  Anyway, us constantly holding him back made him not so happy.  So we figured it was time to get some lunch and move on.  I would love to go back again though.

Virginia Living Museum

On our 4th day we decided to take the kids to the Living Museum.  They LOVED it!

My little cuddely bats! :)

They had the coolest aquarium wall with huge fish and sharks!  My kids could've stayed there for hours!

Silly Abby!

A pretty cool croc.

Hands on learning spots!  Awesome stuff!

Roz, Adam, Abby, Dave & Joey by the Earth!

Their outside trails were super cool! 

These guys had been injurred or something, so they were kept here to be protected.  Very gorgeous birds!

Giddyup!

Climb!

It was the most adorable thing to watch these 2 use the little telescopes...Joey would look in, and thought that was cool.  But then of course wanted to listen too! : )

Thanks Roz for showing us this place.  Fun times!

Field Trip to the Children's Museum

For Abbies first preschool field trip we went to the Children's Museum.  The kids had a GREAT time!  So much to play with and do, and it's nice and A/C'd, so us parents were happy!  :)

Abby can barely stand a tiny hangnail on herself...but she loves seeing other people's "owees"...so maybe an M.D. would work for her...??   :) 

Dr. Omer...it actually does have a ring to it doesn't it?  

This was the train room tunnel.  If you look all the way through you'll see Ada & Joey too.  :)

This was in the Animal Vet section.  Funny how my little puppies fit in those cages so well!  ;)

Voila- Chef Abigail!

I think Joey would have sat in the submarine driver seat all day!  

We barely missed their foam craft time... bumma.  But the kids had fun coloring in the art section.

After lunch, we attacked the last little section with the firetruck and police motorcycle in it!  Joey was all over it!

And this was a rarity...no other kids climbing all over each other and the seat!!  

Goin for a ride....

Until Abby lost her driver....

Yes, Joey's true future profession....a STUNT MAN!  He constantly wanted up on this thing, but insisted on climbing up and sitting at the very top!  LOL

So, second picture now of Abby sitting behind a boy on a motorcycle...I hope this isn't foreshadowing.  It probably is.  Uh-oh!