Jinkies, that was fun!

A couple weeks ago, the day after Carter's birthday, we were supposed to go for our annual Strong Museum night courtesy of an investment my grandma set up for me years ago.  It's been one of the coolest things to be able to go for free when it's not so busy (or feeling overrun with germs).  I was looking forward to it so much this year because the current temporary exhibit was one we were excited about, so I was pretty bummed when the weather forecast for that day looked less-than-ideal.  Sure enough, they opted to postpone, which was at least a relief that it wasn't canceled.  Initially I was nervous they'd bump it out father, but thankfully it was just a two-week wait.  Unfortunately, Craig was feeling a bit under the weather and Jacob was not interested, so in the end it ended up being just Carter and me.

Every year I swear we'll get there right on time when it starts, because it's only 2-1/2 hours and always feels so short.  But every year it's apparently hard to convince myself to make dinner shortly after 4pm so we can leave by 5:15.  This time it was a combination of not being hungry, getting caught up in an activity, and dinner taking longer than planned to make, and we didn't get there until 6pm.  Darn.

Our first stop was the temporary exhibit room, which this time featured Scooby-Doo!  Scooby has long been a favorite around our house--I think we own almost every DVD there is.  It was cool to see a Mystery Machine in person!

The exhibit was really cute.  There were a bunch of activities, mostly geared toward little kids but some that were fun for everyone.  They had a section explaining some of the techniques that the criminals use so you could look for clues around the exhibit.  This section was testing out a trap--you had to get each section set up, and then there was a net on the right that came down over the suspect.

In this one, Scooby kept busting through walls running from a ghost, and Carter had to contort himself to fit through the Scooby-shaped holes accurately.

They had a couple Playmobil displays around, as well as a display of lunch boxes from over the years and some other toys and collectibles.

Carter loved this section.  He was on the other side of the wall controlling the knight's eyes, scary sounds, and funky lighting.  He could see me on a camera to see my reaction.

They had a section--no surprise--that was dedicated to food.  I thought it was cute to imagine Carter sitting down to pizza with Scooby!

But standing next to him was pretty fun, too!

They had a whole setup where you could make a giant fake-food sandwich or ice cream.  I didn't see the bread until later and sort of wished we'd made a silly giant one!

They did, however, have this fun game that was sort of like Whack-a-Mole--hit the buttons as they light up and add a topping to your sandwich.  Carter got 54 twice, but I must have missed a couple as I only got 52!  At the end the sandwich grew like you see!

I was personally most excited to get my picture with Velma.  You may recall I dressed up as her for Halloween years ago, and as my maiden name is only one letter off from Velma's last name, I have long been associated with her in my family.  I was half tempted to bring my Halloween sweater out of storage and wear it so we could be twins.  Had my hair still been short, I may have been more tempted!  Even still, it was fun!

She doesn't have her glasses on here because she lost them and wants help figuring out the clues!

In this station you had to scan clues and get some identifying characteristics of them to put them all together and pick your suspect.  We almost got tricked by one red herring detail, but we got it!

In this one you had to play notes in a certain order for a little compartment of jewels to open up on the organ.

When I got to the better Velma cutout, I had to put my own glasses on to take the selfie!

And voila, my new profile picture!

It was fun to get pictures with the whole gang!  Make sure you zoom in and see what Carter's sign says!

Our next stop was the pinball arcade.  Most of our favorites were actually under maintenance, including the old-school baseball one, the Mario one, and the Hot Wheels one.  We still managed to find some fun ones to play.

Near the back door exit to the Game Park outside was this fun Snoopy.  I wished Craig had been there to see him!

We tried to play giant Chutes and Ladders but got a little confused and had to move on.  But it was cute!

It's a little sobering seeing your childhood in a museum.  My Little Pony got inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame last year.  I definitely had at least one small one (it was a baby and had cute baby accessories), and I believe I had a stuffed one similar to the one they had there.  The internet tells me it was "Parasol".  I have no idea what happened to her, but I thought she was pretty cool.
 

Up in the other arcade I had to try this game.  It was challenging--you had to use two different levers to control the helicopter and have it's "whiskers" on the bottom contact little metal posts around the edge.  One at a time would light up and you had two minutes to see how many you could get.  I actually did really well until one that seemed to be just out of reach.  I tried so many times!

Speaking of toys from my childhood, I can't remember if I ever posted this before, but I desperately wanted one of these.  I was at a little shop with my grandma who loved to buy us things, and I really wanted one of these.  She refused to buy it because it was ugly.  She did buy me a tiny porcelain tea set, which I did love despite its impracticality.  It's actually still at my house in a memory bin, although it's down a handle or two.  But I still love him.

This entire shelf was my childhood as well.  Strawberry Shortcake, Smurfs, and poseable Care Bears.  I had a bunch of each!

Since Carter vetoed going into the butterfly exhibit, I had to settle for taking pictures of fish.  I do love the fish, though they're even harder to photograph.

We went into the Digital Worlds section (the one that was new last year) and did a few of the digital activities.  Carter was obsessed with this one where you tried to avoid the lasers.  He got reasonably far until we couldn't figure out how to get past the rock bed at the end.

I didn't take a ton of pictures because my phone was dying and so much of what we done was similar to what we've done in the past.  We just popped around to almost the entire museum (somehow we totally missed the Video Game Hall of Fame this time--I just didn't even see it) and did a little of everything.  We did the crooked room, the air cannon (although Carter did it at ME instead of the target), controlled the giant Mr. Potato Head and Magic 8-Ball, played a little Super Mario and Atari, and quickly looked at some of the other toy displays.  

I stopped to get one more Scooby selfie on our way back through...

...and then made Carter sit on the Sesame Street steps with me.  It could have been Big Bird's nest, so I think he got off easy.

On the way out we did a quick three-minute jellyfish design in the last seven minutes of the event to add to the aquarium screen.  It's so cool--you design your fish or jellyfish, scan it, and it immediately pops out of a tube into a couple giant screens that look like an aquarium.  Carter did the "Hi" to be silly, and I did the coloring on the rest really quick.

This is how it looked:

It's so cute, isn't it?  

Anyway, it was a really fun night even if I wished (as always) that we had more time.  Carter may be getting to a point (like Jacob) where he's mostly over it, but as I told Carter, maybe that will become Craig's and my date night instead!  Or, heck, I'll go by myself!  I rarely get to look at exhibits for more than a second anyway, so sometimes it's nice to just do what you want!  I did tell my parents they should come sometime, as I don't think they've ever been (unless they went with my brother's kids once?), and that's probably a fail on my part to never have gotten them there with my kids when they were little.  It is a bit overstimulating on a typical day, but this event would be much easier for them to manage, I think.  We missed having Craig (and Jacob) with us this time around, but I'm glad to have had another year to enjoy it with my buddy.