After-Thanksgiving Trip

Instead of heading out to brave the sales, the Saturday following Thanksgiving I took the girls up to St. Joseph (by Lake Michigan and it has one of the BEST beaches we've been to up here!) They have a decent Children's Museum there. It is nothing like the Houston or Indy museum, but it's pretty good for a small town. I wish South Bend had one as nice.

They had 2 special activities the day we went up: Reptiles and Dream Catchers. No, I don't think they were suppose to be related. But, the girls had a lot of fun.



There was an animal handler that had a small boa, a yellow LARGE boa, and an alligator. I've seen alligators up close, even ones as small as this, but I've never touched a live one before. It was pretty freaky.



Yes, Zoë actually held a snake. Not at my insistence, either. She asked if she could and the animal handler let her hold it. However, I did have to beg to get her to do it a second time so I could snap a picture.



Of course, Miranda was very excited about seeing animals. She goes so nuts over living things (dogs being the #1 on her list, but squirrels, cats, or just about any other animal will get attention).




After making our Dream Catchers and touching reptiles, we headed upstairs. Megan and Zoë started by painting their faces:

Then Zoë disappeared to explore, and Megan came with me and Miranda to the "toddler" room. One of the main attractions there is the water table. Even Miranda got in on the action:


I think Miranda's favorite part, aside from the live animals, was riding on the horse. I was a little nervous, but she had so much fun rockin' out.



As a child, one of my favorite things about the Seattle Children's museum was that we could pretend to play life. There were some houses and stores, complete with food, shopping carts and fake money. It was GREAT! This museum has an adaptation- you have to harvest the apples, and then you can buy them. Megan handled the money while her sisters worked in manual labor- or maybe it was Zoë doing the manual labor, while Miranda supervised?