Discovering that we're suckers

John took the day off for my birthday yesterday and I was excited to do some "family stuff".  We discussed our options:  Indoor playground at the mall, Aquarium, Discovery Museum downtown, Dinosaur museum, The farm to look at animals...

I decided that I wasn't likely to go all the way downtown to go to the Discovery Museum all by myself and John isn't likely to want to go ever, so being that it was my birthday and he was required to do whatever I wanted, we went to the Discovery Museum.

It was more pricey than I thought it would be, and I thought it was pretty lame that they charge the same price for all children, even a one year old who can't even participate in most of the exhibits.  Also, why do the parents have to pay full price?  It cost us $25 for the three of us to get in and once inside we realized, it's really just a glorified playground.  It was fun though, and if Alex was older, it would have ALMOST been worth the price of admission, but $25 bucks?  I don't think so.

Even after the sticker shock of admission, we put on our wrist bands and went inside.  I was expecting more of a museum type of a place, but it was really more of a "little world" kind of thing.  It was setup almost like a little town.  There was a little construction site, a little grocery store, a little gas station, a little farm, a little water treatment plant...  Kids were riding around on little scooter cars and wearing police uniforms and mailman hats, some were dressed as construction workers, farmers, grocery clerks...

First we took Alex into the baby area, there was a little tree house and a beaver hut and a swan lake and toys all over.  They have little costumes in all the areas and I dressed him up like a beaver while he played. (of course I forgot my camera, so all I had was my phone to take pictures)

The waterworks exhibit was by far his favorite and ended up completely soaked

My personal favorite was the farm area.  There was a big horse and stuffed chickens and fake veggies to pick.  When we first went over there was an "egg tree" which bothered John so he took all the eggs down and replaced them with fake apples. 

After a bit more exploring, we discovered a whole other level for older kids all about communication and media.  John found the stop motion film setup and started making a dirty movie involving a plastic lion and a pink squeaky bunny, but his plan was thwarted when another family came by and started watching what he was doing.  He ended up making a snuff film instead.  Surprisingly no one was offended when the lion, originally intended to be humping the pink squeaky bunny, murdered him and their intended threesome partner the plastic dinosaur.

All in all we had a good time though and maybe with The Boy is a little older, we'll go back again.