On Monday we went to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh. The museum is free which makes it even better!
Carter just finished being a squirrel in the second grade music performance so he was excited to pose with the squirrel.
Gray looks so old in this picture!
He's also learning from his brothers and making ridiculous faces and poses for pictures (including dabbing)!
We went to an animal encounter program and the boys got to touch several animals, including hissing cockroaches!
The museum recently expanded to include a research center. There are exhibits here as well as actual scientific work you can watch being done. There are also labs were the kids can learn more about science in a hands-on way.
One thing the boys did was extract wheat germ DNA. This brought me back to my AP Chemistry days!
After about four hours at the museum, we moved on to the North Carolina Museum of History that is in the next building. The boys moved through these exhibits a little quicker and so I didn't take many photos.
We spent about an hour there before deciding we'd had enough of museums for the day! Since we were close to NCSU, we stopped by the Alumni Center to find a letterbox that is located in the parking lot. While there, we got a picture with a wolf :)
We stopped by a McDonald's for ice cream (and cheeseburgers since Carter and Gray prefer that) and then went to Marla Dorrel Park which is about a mile from Brian's parents' house. We planned to only stay about 30 minutes because it was getting cold but after many, many 5 minute warnings, we finally left after about 1 1/2 hours. It's hard to pull the boys away when everyone is actually having fun and there is no whining!
On Tuesday I took the boys to Durham to the Museum of Life and Science. We got in free with our membership to the museum in Oak Ridge, TN we join each year for only $35. We got to the museum a little before it opened so we walked down a greenway near the museum to find a letterbox. The museum currently has an outdoor dinosaur exhibit but they had another one that Brian remembers from his childhood that was damaged in a storm and abandoned. There is still one dinosaur remaining from it and that is where we found the letterbox.
To get a good picture, I have to promise to take a silly picture afterwards. I usually end up deleting them - don't tell the boys!
We spend about an hour inside the museum hoping it would warm up a little bit before heading to the outdoor exhibits.
The boys' favorite part was the new exhibit that opened last year. It's called Hideaway Woods and it is AWESOME!!! It is several treehouses connected by walkways and nets. To me it looked like an Ewok village from Star Wars. The boys spent a long, long time here. Even Gray had no fear and climbed up and down everything on his own.
Gray almost lost it when he saw the train go by. We had to wait until our ticket time of noon but he survived. He's a little obsessed with "eeeeees" as he calls them (he's trying to imitate the whistle sound with his name for them).
We spent another couple of hours doing the outdoor things ...
Butterfly House:
Dinosaur Trail:
Catch the Wind (sailboats):
Into the Mist (it was only in the 40s but the boys didn't think anything of getting a little wet!):
On Wednesday I took the boys to Marbles, a kids museum in downtown Raleigh. Again, we got in free with our membership to the museum in Oak Ridge. We got to the museum just after it opened and it was great for about an hour. And then it got really crowded. It was still fun but we only stayed about 2 1/2 hours.
Waiting for the giant piggy bank to be filled with enough money (green balls) for it to open up
Pizza delivery man ...
The fitness area is pretty cool ...
Gray loved the giant train table. He calls trains "ee-ee"s (that's the sound he first made to imitate the train whistle and it's stuck with him as the name of trains). The whole time he was playing (probably 20 minutes), he was saying "tooo-tooo".
Once the museum got too crowded for us, we headed out. We ate a packed lunch in the car and headed to Pullen Park.
Pullen Park is adjacent to NC State but I had never been there before. It's a small park with a playground, a few rides, and a little lake. Gray was SO EXCITED to get to ride another train! For some reason, all the boys were. We played on the playground 10 minutes and then sat on the unmoving train for 30 minutes since it only ran every half hour. We did get the front seats though!
Next we rode the carousel.
We didn't spend much more time at the park - the troops were hungry. We decided to do another McDonald's run for ice cream and cheeseburgers. And then we went to another park closer to Brian's parents' house - Walnut Street Park.
After playing for a bit, we hunted down a series of four letterboxes. It took a little while for the last one, but we managed to find them all!
We got back to the house close to 5 pm again. Another long but fun day!
The next day was Thanksgiving. My mom drove up and we had a fun day at home with Brian's parents.
On Friday my mom went with us and we took the boys hiking at Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve, which is adjacent to Brian's parents' neighborhood. There is a beautiful new nature center that has been added since we'd been there in college. The indoor area was closed but we still got to play in the outdoor area.
We hiked a couple of miles and enjoyed some beautiful weather for the end of November!
Gray didn't make it too long before passing out ...
I've never noticed him sleeping quite like this before in the backpack!
Afterwards we checked out a new park that was close by - Jack Smith Park. There were these awesome sheep sculptures to play on ...
And piles of huge sticks to build with.
The playground was awesome too!
We went back to the house after this to watch NCSU beat UNC (yay!) and spend some more time with Brian's family. We headed back to Nashville the next day. We had a great time exploring Raleigh and I loved getting to spend so much time with the boys!
