Carter giving Rylan a little love before we left ...
It took us about 30 minutes to drive over to Durham and both kids slept the whole way there (so nice!). We got there right after the museum opened at 10:15 am. There weren't many people there so Carter had a lot of freedom to run around. It never got very crowded and we rarely saw the several school groups that came through.
I had been to this museum once with Brian when we were in college and a lot had been redone since then.
We did the inside portion of the museum first. We didn't spend long in there as Carter ran from exhibit to exhibit without really seeing what it did. He did take a little more time to see the animals though.
The alligators ...
Snakes ...
Carter loved the snakes here and at the zoo. He pointed each of them out to us and made a snake sound.
Carter and Brian checked out some of the space exhibits ...
The one area Carter did stay for awhile was the children's play area. Carter gravitated to his favorite, the kitchen. It was combined with a set of little cages with stuffed animals so he pretended to make food for the animals and put it in each cage.
Another thing Carter liked was this cool ball ramp ...
And this one ...
We pulled Carter away from the children's area eventually and went outside. The first thing we played with were these neat wind chimes ...
I found a bench away from everyone and fed Rylan while Brian and Carter played in the giant sand box. They had another one of these cool diggers ...
Next was the caboose, which Carter loved, of course. However when Brian and Carter were up by that tiny window, a school group came through the caboose and trapped them up there. They were apparently extremely loud and scared Carter a little bit. But he was fine.
Carter enjoyed these neat fountains that you pump to squirt water out of different areas ...
Rylan was in the Bjorn a lot of the day, but here's a picture of him enjoying some time in the stroller ...
We had lunch at Grayson's Cafe at the museum. We usually try to avoid eating at museums, zoos, etc because the food usually isn't very good and really overpriced. However the food here was amazing and super reasonable.
However, we did have a bad parenting moment. We sat outside and the chairs were made of light plastic. We were sitting against the windows for the cafe and Carter liked seeing his reflection in the window. He was standing in his chair some and we weren't being very strict about making him sit down. Brian and I both turned our attention away from Carter for a second to look at the train we were planning to ride later and Carter tipped his chair over backwards and landed on his face. There was some screaming for a few minutes and a red mark for a little while on his forehead, but Carter was fine. We felt like the worse parents ever though.
Our next stop was the coolest part of the museum. The Dinosaur Trail!!! Carter loved finding new dinosaurs and pointing them out to us.
At the end of the trail there was an area where the museum had brought in a bunch of gravel and let the kids dig. The kids are supposed to dig for fossils (shark teeth, coral, etc).
Carter loved getting to play with a shovel and dig a hole ...
We quickly checked out the insectarium and then took a ride on this little train ...
Brian and his boys ...
Carter actually sat with me (he was attached to Brian our entire vacation and rarely let anyone else hold him) so Brian got to hold Rylan.
These were the faces Carter made when the train started to move ...
Rylan also seemed to enjoy the ride. He just stared out at the passing trees the whole time.
After the train ride, Carter and Brian checked out the Butterfly House while I fed Rylan again.
Next we walked to back of the museum property where they have bears, wolves, and lemurs. It was really, really hot in the sun so we moved through the other exhibits back there pretty quickly. We did spend a little time though at the Sailboat Pond. Even though there wasn't any wind, we were able to push the boats from the side of the pond to get them started and then steer them.
Everyone was getting worn out so we did a quick run through of the Farmyard before heading out.
We finally left around 2:30 pm. We expected to spend only about 2 hours at the museum but were there over 4 hours and still skipped a lot. We're looking forward to going back sometime.
Carter and Rylan fell asleep almost immediately once in the car and since Carter needed a longer nap, we drove around NC State's campus for a little bit to see what had changed since we were last there before heading back to Brian's parents' house.
We spent a couple of hours relaxing and then went to dinner at Jasmine (a tiny Greek and Lebanese restaurant). Rylan slept the entire time we were at dinner and Carter tried to fall out of his chair again (he was sitting this time but slid to the side of the chair too far and almost fell and put a fork into his head).
When we got back to the house, we let Carter play with Brian's parents for a little bit and then got the boys off to bed.
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