Strong...Part 2

Back in October we went to the Strong National Museum of Play for our annual free night through a company that handles an investment my grandma set up for me.  It went so fast and it felt like we barely had time to do anything that night.  I told Carter we'd have to come back another day and try to hit up the rest.  Turns out we didn't have to wait long, or figure out how to do it on a day that wouldn't be completely overrun with kids.  We got another opportunity for a free night through the national brain study that Jacob participates in!

My first priority this time was to get in to see the butterflies, since we didn't get to in October and there was a special event happening with extra blue morpho butterflies and some Christmas decorations.  I was skittish as usual as the butterflies flew by my head, but I soldiered on tried to get some good pictures!

This butterfly wouldn't stop moving, but you get the idea...

This one was on an ornament...

These butterflies loved the white orchids.  There were a few of them in this area.

We also saw a toucan-type bird...

Sort of hard to pick out the butterfly in this one, but it's clinging to the twine-looking stuff.

There were a bunch of these birds there, too.  I believe they're some sort of quail.  They were little and made me nervous as they darted across the walkways!

Still bugs, but cool ones...

More ornament fans...

I chased this one down for a while until it finally landed...

We liked watching the chameleon, too.  Those eyes are shifty!

This flower made me wish I could go somewhere tropical.

Note the blue body on the underside of this one...

These are the blue morphos.  There were a bunch around, though they mostly liked to sit and eat here.  They're probably my least favorite when they sit like this, but when they open their wings, the iridescent blue inside is so gorgeous.  Of course, none of them would do it for me.  Carter was delighting in telling everyone that the "black thing in the middle" (among the legs and antennae) was the tongue.  According to him, it's really long and they use it like a straw.

It was time to go back out into the museum, so I grabbed a couple last pics before we left...

I took one last picture of Carter in front of the little waterfall, where he loved looking at the turtles.  Ignore his hair--it just got cut a month ago but we're having a heck of a time getting it to stay in place!

Carter's first priority was to go to Wegmans.  He did a round of shopping and scanning, and then wanted to serve me in the prepared foods section.

Then he wanted me to serve him!  Check out his steak!

Next up was one of the newer features.  We looked at it a little last time but spent a bit more time this time.  First he crawled into a nearby tunnel (and later on, so did I) to see some live cockroaches (ewwww), and then we worked on creating a long tunnel of PVC pipe for balls to roll through.  Someone else gave us a great head start, and we worked on perfecting it to go the entire length of the magnetic panels, and addng another section that fed into it halfway down.

Did it work?  See for yourself (sort of)…

It did!  Next it was up to the space ship.  Carter was so cute (and comically serious) about flying it, and I couldn't resist capturing it!

Then we decided to go into a room we visited last on our last visit and didn't have much time to explore.  We played a little with the kinetic sand that we found so cool last time, but on the other side of the room was Carter's absolute favorite part of this trip.  There was a crooked room that made you completely dizzy.  It was tipped at a very sharp angle, so it took some effort just to walk into.  Then walking across it was very disorienting--hard to keep your balance (notice the mats to the left) and very quickly makes you dizzy.  I don't even know if it explained the science behind it, but it was crazy!

This is a little hard to make out, but I tried to take video and of course a bunch of kids ran through.

After making a quick trip upstairs to wander through the video games, we tracked down the Slinky stairs that Carter wanted to find (where you can make a Slinky go down stairs) and ended up hanging out there when Craig and Jacob came back from their stint in the pinball room.  We got into watching people play this interactive motion game, and I couldn't help but snap a picture when Jacob had to do the hula with G.I. Joe!

It honestly seemed like we didn't get to do that much on this visit either, but the boys were satisfied so we comfortably headed out just as the museum was closing.  It was nice to have the chance to check out a few things we didn't see last time.  I swear you could spend days there, and yet now they're building an expansion!  They'll need multi-day passes now, I think!  We're so lucky to have this here in town.

Unfortunately, I think Carter brought home a souvenir - a nasty virus that brought on a stomach bug last night and a 101 fever and sore throat today.  I feel so bad for him because it's sad to see our happy boy so wiped out.  The puking episodes were rough because it's been so long since his last bug and he had some relearning to do.  He actually first did it in the van on the way back from Jacob's lacrosse practice, and he initially just thought he was hungry.  Luckily the damage was minimal--mostly on his coat and pants, and just a little on his seat--and not much overall as it was.  We got lucky.  It took a while for rounds 2 and 3 to hit--he napped right after he got home, and a couple sips of water got the ball rolling again--but it was all over by 11:30.  Thank goodness, because he was so pathetically miserable in the middle of it.  If it's not better tomorrow morning, we might take him into the doctor for a strep test because our kids seem to have odd symptoms most of the time.  Hopefully it passes soon and no one else gets it.  Between Jacob's first basketball practice, Craig's roadtrip, two doctor appointments, and a lacrosse game and practice, we have just a few things going on over the next four days.  But for now, it looks like the curse of early January has hit us again!