Children's Discovery Museum

A couple of friends and I took our little ones to the wonderful children's museum in Bloomington (actually in Normal, but "Normal" just sounds weird). The kids loved exploring and playing with all the hands-on exhibits while the mommies tried to capture all the moments with our cameras. We had a great time and will definitely be back (and bring Daddy... he wished he could go play, too).

Eliza loved the water play area and kept gravitating back there. She loved splashing around. There were more sophisticated and educational parts of the exhibit, but our little ones were more than content with splashing around with the plastic turtle toys. Oh, and wearing blue smocks was fun, too!

There was a fun little playground with a bridge, slide, climbing wall, and mirror tunnel.

Eliza and I drove the pizza delivery truck together. A group of older kids was assembling pizzas and putting them in boxes to load on the truck.

As you can see, it's much more fun to drive around with Ellis than with mommy.

Eliza was so excited to find the plastic versions of some of her favorite foods. You'd better believe she (and every other kid there) put these good-enough-to-eat toys in her mouth. Fortunately, the staff was quite diligent at cleaning everything over and over. Later she took a grocery basket around to collect more food from the market.

Then she assumed the role of cashier.

I couldn't help getting a shot of my belly (37.5 weeks in case you're wondering).

Brushing someone else's teeth is always more fun. You'd better believe that this toothbrush was also in every kid's mouth. Can you blame them?

Our little medical staff in their lab coats.

Of course Eliza had fun taking care of the babies in the nursery.

Here's the gang checking out all the stuff that gets into landfills.

Eliza is standing on a scale that measures in gallons of milk. Eliza weighs 4 gallons of milk. She is playing with cheese that teaches fractions. Even though we don't buy cheese in rounds, she knew exactly what it was.

Driving the combine is something that definitely needs a little mommy supervision. There is a tv screen that you watch as you sit in the driver's seat that shows a video of what you'd be seeing as you harvest corn in the field.

A tractor is not nearly as dangerous as a combine, so I was fine with Eliza driving alone.

These few pictures don't really do the museum justice (and I'm too lazy to post all the videos I took), so you'll just have to trust me that it was cool. All 4 kiddos fell asleep on the drive home, which is a pretty good measure of a successful outing!