Blue Star Museums!

I don't know that I have may readers who are in military families, but there are a few, so I'll pass this along.  This summer, there are hundreds of museums in the states that are offering free entrance to military families.  We decided that we're going to take advantage of this program this summer.  So, two Saturdays ago, we went up to Dayton, OH and went to two places offering this service.  We went to the Boonshoft Discovery Museum and the Piqua Historical Area.

These first few were taken at the Discovery Museum.  This is Nicholas showing me how little the potty in the bathroom was.  He thought it was so cool that there was a "Nicholas size" potty there!

I'm pretty sure Nicholas and Brandon could have played at the Lego table for hours.  When we got home that evening, they pulled out Brandon's Legos and played some more!

They had a "treehouse" connected the the museum.  The kids enjoyed using the binoculars; Nicholas to watch the birds, and Renae to check out the floor.

Nicholas also really enjoyed the dinosaur excavating pit.  He loves playing a game on pbskids.org about excavating dinosaurs, so he was excited to do the same in real life.

These last pictures were at the Piqua Historic Area.  This is the John Johnston farmhouse.  He was a United States Indian Agent for western Ohio.  They also had a restored section of the Miami-Erie Canal for us to take a ride on.

By the end of the tour, Renae was REALLY not feeling well.  When we got home and took her temperature, we found that it was at 103 degrees.  Poor girl!  She was such a good sport throughout the whole ordeal, though, and was fever-free the next morning.

Our way to the canal boat.

When we saw this sunken canal boat, Nicholas grabbed onto Brandon and excitedly said, "Daddy!  I know who did that!"  Brandon said, "Really? Who?"  Nicholas answered even more excitedly, "Pirates!"  We wanted to know where the pirates were now, to which he replied with, "in the woods."  More than a few of our fellow passengers were chuckling at this exchange.

The whole time we were on the canal boat, Nicholas was very concerned about wanting to meet the captain of the boat.  Well, this was actually the tour guide during our ride, and the real captain was on an upper deck, but this man was such a character that me might as well have been the captain in Nicholas's eyes!