Daddy's Day Off

After a week of over-engagement with night and weekend meetings galore, Dada of Ma'at decided to take a day off to save me from two more straight days and nights in a row as a solo parent. We decided to go to ECHO--the Lake Ecology Museum.

 

It was a gorgeous, spring-like day. Don't be fooled by the hats on my kids in the picture. They didn't really need them, they just love their hats and are too used to wearing them all the time.

 

We learned about soft shelled turtles. Lil Sis was so into them she pointed at them and talked to them for a good 10 minutes straight. Eventually she was willing to leave the turtles be and check out what Big Bro was doing.

Big Bro had tired of the turtles several minutes earlier and was playing in the magic sand that changes color to make sand creations look like a color coded topographic map: mountain peaks to water and every elevation in between.

Then we traveled on to the touch tank. Big Bro scared a sea anenome back into hiding, and Lil Sis loved petting the sea stars. They both liked watching the hermit crabs.

The next big feature was the watershed table where Lil Sis adopted one of the toy fish and didn't want to give it up. Big Bro was old enough to understand the exhibit better and wanted to find the boards that dam the river.

Next was the activity room where kids can just be kids and play. Both Big Bro and Lil Sis enjoyed playing in the toy boat and fishing with magnetic hooks.

After lunch in the cafe we headed to the Alice and Wonderland special exhibit. There were golf balls to play with where the objective was to guide the balls through various physics experiments into a hole using ramps shaped like flamingo heads.

Taking another scene out of Alice in Wonderland, there was an optical illusion hallway to make you feel like Alice as she grew into a giant. It made the grown ups a little dizzy.

It was such a treat to do something fun as a whole family on a weekday. It made solo parenting that night more tolerable too. Well, except that the kids were up extra late after taking a rare afternoon nap to recover from all the day's excitement.