Museum

I love museums: art museums, history museums, science museums, big museums, little museums. The only type of museums that I don't like are natural history museums. I'm not particularly crazy about zoos, and a natural history museum is just a dead zoo to me. But, I love any other type of museum. I am the type of person that reads every sign and looks at every artifact in a museum.

Since we've had kids, I've avoided opportunities and any major plans to go to museums. I've been too concerned that the kids would lose patience and would distract me from my desired museum experience. I proved myself right today. We went to the Museum of Flight today. My desired experience would have been to spend one or two days at the museum (it was very large) and to travel through the history of aviation by looking at and reading about each aircraft and exhibit. But, instead, I ended up just glancing at the different aircraft and only reading a half dozen of the signs and exhibits while I was chasing the kids around and continually telling them to calm down, stop jumping and stop pulling on my hands so much. Four hours at a museum is clearly too long for the kids. Two hours is their limit. Over the next couple of years, I'll work to increase this time, but until then I'm adjusting museum expectations with the kids. I'm okay with that.

Airplanes!

Kids in front of the airplane/car.

More planes!

I've always wanted to see the Blue Angles. I was surprised how small the aircraft was and how annoyed that this man was standing right in front of it while I was trying to take my picture.

There was an excellent children's exhibit where the kids could climb into small, but real airplanes

I think Jonah climbed in and out of this one about eight times

The kids could move the controls and see the rudders move on the aircraft

Climbing down

Helicopter

Hot air balloon basket

Climbing in and out one more time

The underbelly of the Concorde. This was much bigger than I thought.

We got to walk through the Concorde. Very cool.

Retired Air Force One. Very, very cool.

The president's quarters in Air Force One. Very, very, very cool. 

Air Force One cockpit

Even though I was chasing the kids throughout the museum, I did enjoy myself quite a bit. More importantly, I learned how to adjust my museum expectations, at least for the next few years.