{Daddy Day Off} The Children's Museum

Elliott is trying to do better this year at using his time off in a more purposeful way (rather than amassing such a large amount that he is practically off the entire month of December like last year).  So he is taking off a day or two each month and we are using it to do fun family activities.  The last Friday in February he took the day off and we headed to the Discover Gateway Museum, i.e. the Children's Museum.  We went last year and the girls had a blast, so when another 2-for-1 coupon came in the mail and knew we needed to go back.

This time we headed out after lunch at Applebee's (kicking our day off with a fun start) so that we could miss most of the school field trip traffic (a lesson we learned last year).  We stayed for almost three hours. Time really flew by, the girls didn't want to leave!

We were able to participate in a craft time, which focused on the book The Mitten. I was so excited to participate in this because I had just read this book to the girls at home and I thought they would have so much fun doing an activity that went with the story they knew. And they did! We colored pictures of the animals featured in the book and then put them in the mitten (which they glued together).

After craft time Elliott and I spent the rest of the time spreading out with each child, taking turns moving to different activities, trading places, and generally helping them to do what each of them were most interested in.

Piper and Lily played in the water area for quite awhile, while Ava moved over to the grocery store section and "made sandwiches" and organized the groceries for quite some time.

Emma enjoyed the baby section, especially the red and white pinwheel toy on the wall.  Elliott said she would just lay there and watch it forever.

Piper and Lily also enjoyed the oversized xylophone and the plastic balls you put in air tubes.

All of the girls enjoyed the rock climbing wall (for a few seconds at least).

All the girls enjoyed the farm area and dressing up like animals.

And before we left Lily asked me to go with her to the building area. I helped her hoist up blocks to build a structure, but she would tell me what blocks she needed.  It was so fun to be able to interact with Lily like that!

The girls were very sad to leave, but we wanted to try and miss the bulk of rush hour traffic and Emma needed to sleep (as did Lily and Piper too apparently, as they crashed in the car).

We're looking forward to our next Daddy Day Off.  We have two more coming up in March, yeah!