Day at the Museum

When I first brought up going to the science museum, Jacob was less than thrilled.  I guess he's just not a museum type of kid.  Carter was definitely more open to the idea, especially since he likes dinosaurs and I knew there were some dinosaur bones in the collection in Buffalo.  In fact, that was one of the few things I remember of the museum from when I was a kid.  I have two distinct memories of going there--a field trip in probably third or fourth grade, and with at least one of my parents when I was somewhere in my tween to early teen years, which is the last time I was there.  I probably went more than that, but those are my two solid recollections.  From my field trip, I remember a room full of dinosaur bones and an exhibit on extinct and endangered animals.  From my last visit, I don't remember a lot, but I do recall the pendulum they have there, as well as the geodes in the gift shop.

Well, this trip made it clear it's a totally different museum than it was back then.  In the 30 years since, museums have come to rely upon hands-on exhibits, and this one is no exception.  Our main reason for going there now is that there is a Lego exhibit called "The Art of the Brick".

We were able to get a time slot immediately upon arrival, so we started our visit immersed in Lego.  I took pictures of almost every piece we saw, but can only share a fraction here.  But suffice it to say that between the recreations and the original pieces, it was really impressive--almost unbelievable that everything was Lego!

The Kiss in 3-D form

David - Jacob was highly amused by how they censored him.  He does look a bit like a Ken doll.

This one had multiple layers to the waves.

Starry Night - such detail!

Mona Lisa

The original works were mostly in human form.  This was a full body, but I wanted to show the heart situated in the middle of a clear chest cavity.

The boys loved this castle and boat, but how cool that it was within a book, complete with a poem written inside!

Note Andy Warhol, 3-D crayons, and an artist self-portrait in the background

The kids were very impressed by how tall this one was--this doesn't do it justice!

This one was creepy, but very cool!

Around the corner from the human figures, we had this big guy!

So big and very detailed!

The end of the exhibit focused on a series of pictures that looked normal to the naked eye, but upon further inspection, elements of the picture were Lego.  In this case, you can see the towel and the flip flops in Lego next to the photo they're featured in.

At the end there was a building area with tables that each had a different theme or challenge.  Of course my boys just decided to build, or build on whatever else they happened to find. 

Jacob made a hoop.  It's hard to tell, but there's a camera and all sort of other accessories that a real NBA hoop might have.

Carter built on to the foundation of someone's house.  He had all sorts of stuff he added in.

Of course we had to take pictures with the Lego man on the bench...

Having a conversation

Back out into the museum, we came across the Foucault Pendulum I remembered from my last visit so many years ago.  In case you've never seen one, it just keeps moving, and it appears to change direction throughout the day as the earth rotates around it.  It was almost straight back and forth here, but when we saw it later it was creeping closer to the first line to the left.  In reality it swings in the same path as it always has, but the setting around it is what's moving with the earth!

In the space section...who doesn't love one of these things!

They had an activity where you could simulate the night sky if the planets were like our moon.  Here's the Buffalo skyline with Saturn as the moon!

There's an observatory on the top of the museum, and while we couldn't go there, I did snap this shot of the Buffalo skyline from the lobby up there.  There were also some amazing churches to see that day, both from there and from the top of the Broadway Market parking garage, which took on additional significance given the Notre Dame fire in Paris earlier in the week.

There was a section about weather and other natural forces, and Carter did the most hilarious video weather report since he couldn't actually read the script.  Maybe someday I'll post it, but it was green screen awesomeness, for sure. 

The boys really liked this activity that aimed to show erosion.  You could haul very coarse sand/tiny rocks up to where water was flowing, and use little walls with different cutouts to change the flow of water and see how the rocks moved as a result.  They probably could have stayed here for a long time, but I was a little nervous about time and had to keep them moving.  We ran into that in a lot of spots, actually, including the next area where you could play with building pipes to direct air flow and keep a ball floating in the air.

In this section on the human body, we measured our heart rate before and after 10 jumping jacks...and yes, it definitely goes up!

We came to a section of oddities, including a chicken with a crazy long tail, a dinosaur egg...

...and a mummified cat that was found in the wall of a Buffalo home.  And yes, it was done on purpose by some sort of immigrant.  It was creepy but fascinating!

The main hall of the museum is probably one of the few things that remained similar over the years.  I don't think Seymour the Mastodon was the centerpiece back then, but the hall was so classic and beautiful, just like you imagine an old museum should be.

There was a biodiversity room with tons of taxidermied animals, and I found this seal intestine coat fascinating.

This Buffalo diorama was one of the other few intact spaces from when I was a kid.  I don't remember it specifically, but I recall this type of display being more of the norm in museums back then.  There was another one in the extinction room of sea life that had been there since the '30s.

I remember learning about endangered and extinct animals on my school field trip, and while that exhibit was no longer intact, they had a very cool room of endangered and extinct animal exhibits.

One thing I remember specifically was learning about the dodo bird, and look, this is what it looked like!

In that room the boys had a blast covering up the fossils in the fossil dig.  It was getting late in the day and things were getting much quieter, so the boys spent quite a while moving the rubber pellet "dirt" back over the built-in bones.  Of course, kids came in a few minutes later and started unearthing everything again, but I guess maybe they could enjoy the kids' excitement of their "discovery"?

It was almost time to go, but out in the lobby (a new atrium built on to the outside of the building that connects it to a magnet school), we got to see this guy, who has apparently been welcoming guests to a couple different sites in Buffalo for many, many decades.

The boys were enjoying these pressurized rockets.  You could pump the levers until the pressure gauges stopped changing, then release the foam rocket.  Both went well above the 15 foot mark and nearly reached the top of their guide wire!

One last set of dinosaur bones on the way out--an Albertosaurus.  His name is Stanley...after the Cup, I presume, since he and Seymour both came from the same donor, and Seymour would seem to be after Seymour Knox III, the Sabres' original, long-time owner.  Just a guess, but that would seem to be a very Buffalo thing to do :)

Anyway, we left the museum to find a very breezy but absolutely lovely warm day, hence the rush to get back to my parents' house and get some outside time for all of us.  Although Jacob was hesitant about the museum and wouldn't admit he actually liked it, I think both boys enjoyed the experience.  Even though the museum was almost nothing like I remembered, it was fun to see it again and give the boys a little bit of an adventure on their spring break.

Spring Break-ish

It's been a while...sorry.  I guess not much has been going on, at least not in comparison to all that I knew would be happening later this week into the weekend.  I'd been spending weeks waiting to get to mid-April, and it finally got here!  Last weekend was my cousin's baby shower.  It was on the Niagara River, and the sunset as we sat there was gorgeous!

The next morning I captured this shot of a blue jay outside my parents' house...

The boys were on spring break this week and Craig and I split the week.  He was off with them on Monday and Wednesday, and I was off Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.  The weather early in the week was pretty awful, so it meant a lot of time in the house.  On Tuesday the boys and I did our annual egg dyeing.

Ignore Carter's face...he was doing it on purpose.  Grrrr.

Jacob made Toronto Raptors' themed ones, and we experimented with rubber bands and white crayons.

His old school purple and red Raptors one was pretty cool :)

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon working on the reorganization of our office.  I dismantled our desk, moved the old dresser/changing table into its spot, and moving Jacob's old bookshelf in.  It definitely opens up the room a bit!

On Wednesday we decided to do frozen yogurt for dinner to use up coupons the boys had that were expiring.  Why not, right?
 

The weather had improved by Wednesday, so the boys went out to a playground in the city so Jacob could play on a nice basketball court.  Craig took this picture of Carter, who was apparently channeling Star Wars as he played.

Our big plans were Thursday, when I wanted to take the kids to the Buffalo Museum of Science, where I hadn't been since I was probably just a little older than Jacob.  But before heading there, we did a detour to the Broadway Market, which is an Easter tradition in Buffalo, especially if you're Polish.  We only make it every other year or so, and even though the boys weren't thrilled, we made it work.

Butter lambs!

Admittedly, with a gluten-free kid it's a bit more of a minefield, but he did enjoy sampling flavored popcorn and both boys ended up with a little bag of flavored nuts, which made the trip much more tolerable for them.  I got a couple new Polish eggs to add to my collection.

I'll skip the museum for now to give it a post of its own!  After the museum we headed back to my parents' house for the evening.  It was a pleasant 70+ degree day, and even though it was mostly cloudy by that point, it was still a good night to hang out outside.  I went out for a run shortly after dinner, and then I made good on my promise to get Jacob to a basketball court.  Unfortunately, the really nice one was occupied so we ended up back in my old neighborhood at a different one.  The kids at that one were closer to his age, so he was able to play for a little while, as Carter and I went over to the playground.  

This playground was the site of my main childhood playground.  It's completely different now, but as Carter played I was picturing exactly where each and every piece of equipment was.  I bet I could guess it within a few feet!  I was trying to explain one piece of equipment, a spinning ride, to Carter, and ended up using my Google Photos app to bring up a picture from my scans of my parents' pictures:

That's my brother at about five years old.

On the site of the main playset now was once a giant tornado slide!  It was so big and clearly wouldn't be up to safety standards now.  Between the height and the metal surface that could burn you on a hot day, it was a force to be reckoned with!

There used to be a public pool on the site, as well, and the swings backed up to it.  Here's me on a baby swing...

This picture is a sweet one--if only our whole relationship was that sweet!  Ha!  These swings lined the back of the park.  When I saw this picture, I marveled a bit...

...because if you look in this picture (toward the basketball court Jacob was playing on), the green house to the left of center and the tudor to the left of that are both visible in the picture above.

I would have loved to raise my kids in a neighborhood like this, with tons of kids and easily accessible play areas like this.  And that I can see that the area surrounding it hasn't changed much definitely made me marvel a bit at how it's been so many years since these were my stomping grounds!

That field beyond is where the pool used to be, and just beyond that walkway I found what I think was a footer for the swings.

Carter loved spinning on this thing!

My crazy little climber!

There's still a pretty big slide, but not quite what it once was!  He even managed to climb back up this one!

It was a fun little stop for Carter, and a little dose of nostalgia for me.  Unfortunately, the kids Jacob played with weren't the best, but I think it was important for him to get in some basketball on that pleasant day.  We had a fun one, and were all pretty beat that night!

We had a church and family day on Friday, and today is just a chill kind of day with a couple plans before we head back to Rochester for the night.  Craig is working a game, and then tomorrow we'll be back to spend Easter with his family.  Easter weekend is always a good one.  But first...our trip to the museum!