Merry Christmas at the Children's Museum!!

Amos and I had such a fun day, going to the Children's Museum to check out their special Christmas set-up. I know, I thought too that it would be crazy today, but it turned out to be fine and lots of fun.

We started up at the special Christmas section, Jolly Days. There were many strollers parked outside the door, so I figured it would be quite busy. I was right. There were kids running around everywhere and the line to see Santa was really long. So, we walked in and went to the "ice" castle first, that had a cool slide. Since Amos has worked on his sliding skills since our last visit, I thought it would be fun for him to give it a shot. After almost getting run over by many rambunctious older and bigger kids and then being helped at the slide, by a lady who thought she was helping (she wasn't), we decided to head over to the ice fishing display where Amos pretended to catch a giant fish!

We then saw where the sitting on Santa's lap area was but, Amos was more enthralled with the train that was set up in a plexiglass box, that had buttons for you to push and make it go!

I decided that we wouldn't really need to sit on Santa's lap and decided to head for our favorite part of the museum, Playscape, where they have tons of fun things for you to do, play with and crawl over. When we first walked in, we saw the water section, which made Amos very excited and say please, emphatically. We spent half an hour there playing, and he got super wet! But because of the special Christmas stuff going on, this part of the museum was quiet and not very busy at all, so we took advantage of that and played for a long time.


After the water play, we went over to the slide, which again, was totally empty. Amos had fun going up the stairs and down the slide, remembering to "turn around" and go down on his tummy, feet first. He loved it and it was a very fast slide!

He made a pit stop and pretended to be a little birdie!

And then it was down to play in the garden, which had puzzle-like pieces with veggies on them. He did a very good job putting the right shapes in the right holes.

There was a stop in the Hoosier dog house...

And the playhouse kitchen, complete with fake food and baby dolls.

Then we found the lawn mower, which I helped him stand up to push. He really loved this toy!!

And a stop in the mini bull dozer.

He rocked on the little airplane a bit and then crawled over to the padded crawling area for babies, which is also very fun (not pictured).

I looked that the time and saw that it was lunch time. I thought that maybe the line for Santa might be shorter and decided to go check it out. The wait only took five minutes and after debating on whether or not to order pictures, I decided not to, that I would do my own! :)

When it came to be our turn, as soon as Santa turned Amos around to sit on his lap, Amos arched his back and started screaming. I think it was a combonation of being tired and hungry, and the fact that it wasn't me, and some strange bearded fellow, didn't help. So I grabbed Amos, handed the camera to the photographer and posed with Santa, too. This helped a bit, although, I don't think Amos was convinced! After viewing the pics later, I was glad I didn't order any, as this was fun to capture, but not something I would want to pay money for!

The look on Santa's face is priceless!

...doing somewhat better!

After seeing Santa, we headed down for lunch, figuring that if we took long enough, we would be able to pick Nathan up from work and then run errands, hopefully with a sleeping little guy in the backseat. Our plan turned out to work and after lunch and finding a lost shoe, we met up with Nathan and drove up to the mall area, while Amos was fast asleep. Now, talk about crazy, the traffic up there was awful! I guess it is the Saturday before Christmas...I'll enjoy it while it lasts!
Our day ended with dinner with the Berends, which was so great. Having them into our house, finally, was so much fun. The kids played all over the house as we sat and caught up. We had great wine, dessert and tea and loved being together again.