Labor Day 2010

Once upon a time, a sister visited another sister and on Sunday, that visiting sister and her boyfriend went to Two Rivers to see some sort of 'design' museum type thingy....and as soon as they arrived in Two Rivers, that visiting sister called her sister and said "YOU GUYS HAVE TO COME HERE! It's a KITE FESTIVAL!" That was 5 years ago that we dropped what we were doing, jumped in the van with our swimming suits, and spent the day at the beach...and started our Labor Day tradition of the beautiful Kite Festival in Two Rivers, WI.

But this year...the weather was windy and cold. Not beach weather at all. Add to that I had 1 baby getting over the croup cough and 1 8 yr old who had already missed a day of school with a cold. We weren't going to be swimming in Lake Michigan with the weather like it was.

So what to do? We realized our beloved children's museum pass was about to expire...so we high tailed it down to Madison where it was rumored that their new museum was loads of fun. We invited our Kite Festival family friends....and off we went, without our swimming suits!

The museum is amazing. It is totally different than any other we've frequented (And we've been to many in the midwest!), it was engaging for a HUGE age span and they had LOTS of staff on hand, keeping the areas picked up and ready/fun to play in.

All 6 of the children loved it, and played together so nicely. We played for a bit and then took our picnic lunch out to the capitol lawn, and then played some more. We couldn't figure out what the deal was-did Madison have street vendors out every weekend?! Later, we found out it was the day of "Taste of Madison" and thankfully, we got to the city VERY early and only glimpsed the gigantic crowd that was milling about the capitol!

The museum had fun/challenging climbing structures, and a "human" gerbil ball.

Below, you will see Silas and Ellie....typical competitive 1st borns playing with the water tornado exhibit:

And watching their success:

And then, the 2 non first born/non competitive children watching the 2 competing first borns:

The museum also had a painting WINDOW! Ingenious!!! The kids painted on the window and then squeegeed the paint off to clean their "canvas". Colin REALLY got into it and we have red paint memories all over, forever....

The museum also had cool, unique blocks. Let's just say this next collage is titled "My Blocks"...those of you who know Colin will laugh....

But with those blocks, our friends thought of the best idea: to build a gigantic domino maze! Very neat and very cool. To see the dominos falling down, click HERE. After the 2nd setting up of the maze, one of the girls said "The crowd wants more, we should do it again!" Setting up the blocks had created quite an audience, who also cheered and clapped when the blocks went down. Another girl looked at me and said "Embarrassing!"

And then, on the roof top of the museum, they had lots of outdoorsy stuff. Petting the chickens, seeing an egg be fried by the sun, gardening stuff, flowers, it was really neat!

After we left the museum, we were hungry for dinner. One of our new goals is to be more "normal" with Ellie's allergies. We're calling ahead of time, asking what the restaurants can do for Ellie's meal and we've been shocked at how "easy" and wonderful this has been. Friends had suggested going to "Ella's Deli" in Madison. What a fun place it was.

For 1 thing, children need NO entertainment while waiting on food here: the ceiling is filled with motorized creatures to watch move back and forth and the restaurant is decorated similar to a carnival atmosphere. And, as you drive into the parking lot, you can't help but see the gigantic carousel. The Glynn kiddos each rode 2x, they LOVED it!

And then the day was done! We got home around 7:45pm and all children were in bed and almost asleep before 8pm! They were EXHAUSTED...and what a fun substitute it was. Next year though...we'll hopefully be back at the Kite Festival!