Hey, what d'ya know, I'm almost caught up on the pictures! These ones are very recent, from last weekend when we decided to drive an hour and a half to Portsmouth to check out Virginia Kids Museum. Thanks to our awesome membership at the local Life and Science Museum, we get free admission, so why not go.
We were glad we went. It is a very nice museum, very hands-on. Unfortunately, M wasn't old enough to try the Crime Investigation Lab. It's better suited for kids 8 and older. But maybe next year... We did check it out and at first he was quite interested. But there was just too much other stuff going on, things like giant soap bubbles...
and here's M and I working on getting a bubble wall around us.
And a giant and surprisingly comfy giant chair...
And a chance to captain a boat, put out a (fake) fire, drive a bus...
... ride on a police motorcycle with flashing lights...
... play a slapophone aka a pipe organ...
BTW, Chris got some job-related training operating a gantry crane. M was curious about it and spent quite some time moving 40-foot containers from ship to shore and back.
And then there's the entire second floor! Which was a bit quieter and a lot more fascinating. It was almost entire taken over by an exhibit about energy and ways it can be transferred. Yeah, I tried it too and got all nostalgic about port operations.
There were simple machines, of course, and you could try to lift an elephant (with a long lever) or hoist yourself up using a pulley system (which made me feel like I was only a little bit lighter than an elephant)...
And you could launch an air rocket and a hot air balloon. Or see sound waves. Or pretend you were having an epic battle between Darth Sidious and Yoda, controlling the Force with your bare hands.
And you could watch iron filings dance to the music...
Aside from the energy exhibit, there is also a sizable art lab on the second floor. The best part was playing with this wall, making prints in it. This is our family portrait. But we also left butt prints there too (ok, those were quickly erased, but boy was it fun to watch them appear!) M made countless impressions of himself playing the "carbonite freeze" scene.
He then tried his hand at building with architectural blocks. At first, he felt inspired by the Parthenon.
But once that was done (sort of done, actually, 'cause there weren't enough blocks), he built a hasty carbonite freeze chamber
The afternoon was going great and we decided to drive 30 min more to the First Landing park. Good choice. Sure, it wasn't the ocean. And sure there were lots of people there. But it was very family friendly; the water was calm and stayed shallow for a while; the sand was soft; and there were some treasures to be found (a pottery shard, a sun-bleached bird bone, a couple of mermaids' purses, some flotsam).
Turns out, there is a nice camp ground there and some cabins for rent, lots of hiking trails around, bike rental, lots of ranger-led activities pretty much each day. What a nice place!
But it was getting late and we were starving. So we drove another 30 min or so to a pizza place in Virginia Beach. And then walked over to a Ben and Jerry's. What kind of a perfect summer outing would it be without ice-cream?!
Only then did we realize that it was well past 8pm and we had about 2.5 hrs to drive back to the hotel. Oops! We definitely needed to spend the next day doing something low-key. In fact, I just stayed in bed for most of the next day. And Chris and M stayed around the hotel, playing Frisbee, remote-controlled cars, going to a pool and whatever else they did. Then late in the afternoon we all went on a little tour of the Petersburg Battlefield. This time we got a map even though we knew our destination, the Crater.
So we explored as much of it as we were allowed (you can't climb into the Crater or on the earthwork on the battlefield). We talked about digging a narrow, low tunnel in utmost secrecy, narrowly avoiding hitting the enemy mines, staying quiet as a mouse, hauling dirt out and spreading it around to avoid detection. We also talked about what an explosion must've felt like (without the gory details given M's age).
M seemed to be particularly interested in the cannons and how they worked and how they were sighted and how they were moved from place to place. Which reminds me, maybe we should try building a potato cannon? Anyway, we go to the battlefield pretty much every weekend we're in VA since it's right outside Chris's hotel. And it's nice to be able to explore it bit by bit.
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