~Day 2• 145: Cailee belongs in the Grossology exhibit

Happy Memorial Day!  First off, I am SO thankful for all those who have served our country.  Especially my brother, Loren; two grandpa's; an uncle; and only yesterday, I saw a WWI draft card for my g-grandpa Arlie Campbell, I had no idea.  So special that I am related to these amazing men.  Thank you so much.

I had planned on taking it easy today, but that didn't happen.  The kids got up and played Mine craft together this morning.  Then they moved on to Harry Potter Scene it.  Then they were good kids and cleaned up their rooms so we could go to the Science Center.  The kids absolutely love it there.  For the last 3 years I have been fortunate to find a Groupon deal for a yearly membership.  It has made it affordable to go.  Each time we go, we spend 3-5 hours there.  The kids never seem to get tired of going.  Sometimes it is hard for me to just let them go because I just stand there and make sure they don't terrorize others, or others don't terrorize them.  But it's fun to watch them be so excited.  Nick decided he didn't want to go with us, so he stayed home and cleaned up the garage.  Then went golfing.  We missed him, but I'm grateful he cleaned up the garage.

Today we started out seeing a show in the Planetarium.  It was a trip through our solar  system.  Cailee was not very thrilled to go, but the other two were.  Ashton answered quite few questions from the presenter.  I got motion sick from flying through the galaxy, but it was fun!

The kids have a couple of favorite rooms.  The first one is the mechanical room.  They get to experiment with all sorts of things. They love to spin around on the turny-thingy.  I get dizzy watching them!  My favorite is the iron dust exhibit.  I can stand and watch that thing all day.  It plays music and the iron dusters dance to the music.  It's really cool!

I finally coaxed the kids to lay on the bed of nails.  I actually had to force Ashton to get on the table.  He decided it was really quite comfortable.

The kids like to test their strength with the pulleys.  You sit on the chair and try to pull yourself up.  There is a hard, harder and hardest pull, depending on the placement and type of pulleys.  They all did very well.

There is also a large tug-of-war pull where the rope is placed in two different places, up high or in the middle.  it's nearly impossible to pull the one in the middle.  Ashton liked to try tho.  He kicked my butt.

We spent a little while building a pipe trail for the ping pong ball to run along.  Brookie and Cailee really enjoyed that.  I even had fun figuring out where to place the tubes.

Then we went into the current exhibit running.  We don't go to a lot of the exhibits because they cost extra.  The girls talked me into it.  The exhibit is the Grossology Exhibit.  And it contained stuff that is gross.  Cailee and Brookie climbed on the rock  wall of skin irritations-warts, scabs, scrapes.  Yup.  It gets better.  Cailee climbed up the mouth steps, went down the slide that led to the stomach, and then came out the lower intestines.  Yes, she came out as poo.  nice.

Then the girls went over to the 'fake toot' station.  This imitated someone farting.  Different types.  It was great.  The kids were also able to shoot booger balls into a giant nose.  Then the nose proceeded to sneeze them out.  Cailee loved it.

We also played a game where we could answer questions about the gross things your body does.  The kids answered a lot of questions correctly!  We played a pinball machine that was basically our digestive  system.  Brookie scored over 100k points!  Then they got to hear a large water faucet tell you about the different things your nose does.  It had a large drop of snot come out of his nose.  It was great.

The highlight was the smelling station... You had to squeeze a plastic container and it let out a bodily smell.  You had to identify what that smell was.  I only smelled one thing before I walked away.  Smelly feet was enough.  I really didn't want to smell someone's armpit...or worse.

I'm not sure why this exhibit was brought in.  I'm glad we got it out of the way and don't have to go in again.  So gross.

The other favorite room is the Forces of Nature.  Specifically the water and sand station.  You can build dams and rivers and watch the way the water erodes their creations.  The kids also love the digital room.  Computers and electronics... stuff they just love. 

On the way out of the center, we had to stop at the music station.  The kids can experiment with a couple different musical things.  Not very exciting.  Then they stopped at the  flight station... they can make paper airplanes and try to fly them through hoops.  And the last stop we made was the water  patio.  Lots of different water  fountains you can interact with.  You can watch big plastic balls shoot up into the air, musical instruments played by water... it's nice and cool when it gets hot.

When we were just about to the exit, the girls walked over a vent that was blowing cool air.  They liked that almost as much as the real science displays.  They liked having their skirts blown up...

We stopped and picked up some lunch on the way home.  We decided that Cailee belongs back in the Grossology exhibit.  That little stinker (literally) just giggles every time her little bum toots.  We were about to turn around and put her on display for the fart station.  When we got home, the kids had to lay down for a little while.  The girls both fell asleep.  They needed it.  Nick had gone golfing while we were at the center, and when Cailee woke up, she was happy to see Daddy.  She was trying to talk him into going to Top Golf tonight.  Nice try, but not on a holiday.  She is sure cute trying to convince him though...

We ended up getting dinner and a movie.  We rented Guardians of the Galaxy again.  The girls ditched us for their rooms.  That's ok.. they have a movie to watch tomorrow.  I ended up getting the first "Pitch Perfect."  I'm a little slow, but it was so good!  Nick ditched me because he says he was tired... I just know he was too shy to really get into the movie so he had to leave.  Now I can't wait to see the next one.  Soon...

It was a fun day.  The kids all kept telling me thank you for taking them, and thank you for that.  I love that they really do have good manners and are really thankful for the things we do with them.  It was fun spending time with them.  Love these monkeys.