Storms and Science

We went to the Durham science museum today with Aunt Nora, Grandma, and Cousin Daniel.  It's a great activity because they have indoor and outdoor stuff to do, so it's appropriate for any weather. (And the weather forecast for today was terrible; rain and thunderstorms all day.)

Unbeknownst to us, though, today was a special event -- some kind of Robot Rumble, with all kinds of different robot exhibitions set up all over the museum.  That would have been really cool if any of the children with us had been old enough to care at all about robots.  As it was, what that meant was that both the regular parking and the overflow parking were full, so we had to park at the middle school down the road and take the shuttle bus.  Fortunately, Daniel thought the shuttle bus was just another part of the fun.  :)  James was not sure about it at first (it was a bit bumpy), but he relaxed after I sang the Wheels on the Bus to him. 

We started out in the kids play area, since a lot of the other sections were fairly crowded. The boys had a good time there, but then we took advantage of a break in the weather to go outside and try to find the train (since Daniel really likes trains). 

The second picture is in the play area -- it's not a great picture, but that blurry figure on the left is James making a break for the exit when Grandma turned her back for just a moment.  I like it because it illustrates how fast he moves these days.  :)

It turned out that the break in the weather lasted a good long time, so the boys got to play with the drums, see the little farm, and play on a sand hill.  I'm not actually sure that the sand hill is intended to be a play area; it's possible that it was just there because they were using the sand for something else.  (The title for that picture could be, "Reasons why you should not pay money for things to entertain toddlers."  Thousands of dollars worth of exhibits, and all they want to do is climb the sand hill!)

They do have an actual sandbox with trucks and so on that looked like fun, but we scooted right by that because we thought the train was closer than it was, and because I had a feeling that once Matthew got in there, he wouldn't want to leave.  (He threw a big fit yesterday when he had to leave a sandbox, and I wasn't up for a repeat!  He spotted it anyhow and kept pointing back to it saying, "Play!  Play!", but eventually he was willing to be distracted by the animals...and the other pile of sand. 

Once we reached the train, Daniel decided that all he wanted to do ever in the whole world was to ride the train (even though in the past he's only wanted to look at trains and not ride them), so Grandma went back to the main building to get tickets. In the meantime, we grabbed a quick lunch in the cafe, and finished just in time to get on the train.  (I brought James and Matthew's bottles on board in blatant disregard of the "no food and drink" sign, but the conductors showed us to our seats and didn't say anything, so I assumed bottles were an exception.  I almost asked, but decided I didn't want to give them a chance to say no and thus have two crying babies on my hands!)  The train does a little ten minute loop, and all the boys were great.  When we got off, Matthew even said, "More!  More!"

It was a fun morning and early afternoon, and we left around naptime (although only James ended up taking any sort of decent nap).

P.S.  These pictures are from my phone camera, since Mike has our regular camera.  I know lots of people use their phone as their main camera and seem to be able to take lovely pictures that way, but the pictures on mine (an Android) are generally awful (blurry) -- if any of you techies out there have any suggestions for making them better, I'd be glad to hear them!  (Unless, of course, the suggestion is to get an iPhone -- no dice on that one.  I am still a phone luddite, and only have this beautiful smartphone because it was a gift.)