Children's Museum Cont.

The tickets for the Children's Museum were all day tickets and they let you come and go as you please.  Talk about catering to families! We went back for another couple of hours between naps and dinner.  This time we played with the tree again (of course!), the digging area, and outside.  

The Great Apple Tree.  In these pictures you can kinda see the tubes in the leaves that the apples come down. 

This digging pit had little pieces of rubber, not sand.  It was perfect to play in, except for the mess it left in Charlotte's shoes.  At this point in the afternoon there were maybe 6 other families in the museum so Jay and I just chilled on chairs and watched the kids play.  It was a nice, relaxing way to spend the late afternoon. 

Another favorite: the big slide!

Charlotte is definitely a country girl!

More inside playtime

  
Before we left we, headed to the outside play area.  There was a section with large musical instruments for the kids to play.

Each block you stepped on played a different note.

Charlotte couldn't resist the water area and was soaked by the time we left.  Luckily we had an extra set of clothes in the car!

Scattered outside were these drums.  The bigger they were, the lower the sound. We had a two man band going on here. 

Children's Museum

While we were in Richmond last week we took the kids to the Children's Museum of Richmond.  This was the perfect place to go considering it was 100+ degrees outside and the museum was nice and cool.  It was the ultimate play area for the kids without being crazy or overly stimulating.  Everything was designed for play with a purpose.  We stayed a couple of hours in the morning then went back to my parent's house for lunch and naps.  Here is the massive photo dump of pictures from the morning. 

When we first arrived we had to walk around the gift shop while we got tickets.  Charlotte is a shoe girl.  This was the first thing she spotted and hat to look at!

The three and under room had all kinds of vehicles and there is nothing my kids love better than a toy with wheels, especially ones that they can drive! 

There was a farm stand section where you could sort the produce, hit a lever to make an egg come out of the chicken, and push buttons to listen to animal noises. 

All the toys were made to be climbed on, climbed under, or climbed through. 

 

 Trey LOVED fishing in the boat.  The fishing pole was in high demand and he did a good job sharing with other kids, but he could have fished all day.

 

He is also quite adept at auto repair.  I may need to remember this in the future.

This is a picture of Charlotte and a dinosaur.  She is giving him a kiss.

Going down the slide together, although in hindsight Charlotte would have been safer not starting out in Trey's lap, because you can see she ended up behind him!

  

This tree was played with for the better part of an hour.  It is a huge apple tree with 3 sides that have apples coming out the kids can pick and put in baskets.  When your basket is full you deposit the apples into a container inside the trunk and these tubes with air (or some other scientificy-thing) suck the apples back up the tree and out onto the leaves.   

 Back at Nana and Papa's happy to relax and play.  

Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens

Having no power at home led to a mini vacation at my parent's house in Richmond.  On July 4th we went to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens with my brother and his family.  The kids were happy to see their cousins and had fun exploring a new area. I was impressed by the beauty of the gardens and how wonderfully the Children's Gardens were set up to inspire creativity and play.

Warning: Lots of pictures ahead! 

Waiting to see our cousins! This was my attempt at a nice picture together of the two of them- fail! 

They boys wanted to hold hands as they walked along. 

Trey's cousins helped him since they knew the way around.

In the Children's Gardens.  They had these neat huts with primitive tools and household items.  Trey is sweeping and Charlotte is playing with a dried corn cob. 

We didn't bring the stroller with us and figured Charlotte could just walk.  She walked without getting tired the whole time, only she always didn't want to go where we were going!

This area had a bunch of branches on the ground just for climbing.  Charlotte loves to climb! She also spent a lot of time standing up on the stump behind her.

There was also a huge tree for the kids to climb.  Trey was so brave to climb all by himself! This was just before he slipped and fell under the tree :)

Trey and Chandler looking out the window in the tree house.

Trey LOVED the sandbox and did not want to leave it.  I think he would have had fun digging all day.  He just saw this picture on my computer and said, "That's me digging in the desert with my friends Jacob and Chandler."

Charlotte's first time in a sand box.

She's no so sure, so Chandler brings her a shovel.

She starts to dig with the shovel....

and then decides the sandbox is not for her.

We ended the day with the water area.  There were a lot of kids and Trey and Charlotte were just trying to figure out what all these sprinkler things were!

Charlotte cracks me up here.  She is watching the other kids. She wasn't super excited about the water but she enjoyed seeing all the other kids around. And she looked really cute in her bathing suit :)