Finding their Marbles

For a change of pace, we journeyed out to Raleigh this afternoon to go to the Marbles Childrens' Museum. On the way there, Matthew was talking about dinosaurs ("maybe they'll be awake this time!"), and I cautioned him that we didn't know if there would be dinosaurs at this museum. It turns out that there were not, but there were so many other fun things to do that he didn't care. :)

The boys might have been happy just playing with the huge blocks in the entranceway, but we made it a bit further -- the bank-sponsored area that allegedly is intended to teach kids about money was fun for James and Matthew because it's filled with green ball-pit type balls, which James chased around the room, and Mattie fed into the pneumatic tube that simulated a deposit chute. James, of course, also liked the slide. Mike was disappointed that we didn't have a chance to try out the part where you use big tubes to try to shoot the balls into a huge basket.

After lunch, we spent a little time with the "build your own" cars, and then in the physical activity section, which has spaces for basketball, soccer, little surfboards, and even hockey (which strikes me as a wildly bad idea, to give all these kids big sticks, but it also had an "announcer" area with microphones and buttons to push, which the boys enjoyed). The cage structure on the second to last picture below overlooks the first floor -- the African drumming exhibition was going on while we were there.

The museum felt more chaotic than the Durham one, in part because there were a lot of bigger kids running around, but all of us had a good time. And Mattie conked out asleep in his carseat within minute after we started driving home! (James, who had slept in a bit more like a sensible child, was still going strong and never did nap.)