Grant & Mama Day

A couple weeks ago I took a random day off so Grant and I could spend the day together. With his first day of school fast approaching, I knew I wanted to do a Grant & Mama day soon. So I just picked a day and told Grant to pick a place. He always picks the Museum of Life & Science in Durham. Dinosaurs, a train, and you're allowed to touch almost everything...it's like a dream come true. I was pretty excited about going back too. I read about a new play ground they put in and that some new tree houses were going up.

Funny thing about planning this trip...I forgot that it was June. It was HOT (although, I think this keeps the crowd low). Of course, Grant didn't notice. As soon as the doors opened to the outside exhibits, he was ready to go play. First stop being the new play ground.

Husband always calls him a monkey and this monkey
was more than happy to climb all over that stuff!

After the climbing we moved on to their barnyard animals. This exhibit was really smelly that day, especially with the heat. I don't typically pay too much attention to animal smells but it was hard not to. Even Grant felt the need to announce "Yuck! Something POOPED!" But while in the barnyard exhibit, Grant found some saddles to play cowboy with. He asked me to take his picture for Daddy.

Yeehaw!

We moved on to the "bug house" after that. Grant loves all the creepy-crawlies in there. On our way in I saw a bunch of black-eyed susans. They were my mom's favorite flower, it always brightens my day when I see them!

Bees!

Huge cockroaches (or "coproaches")

Some fish in a little pond that's inside the butterfly room

We still had some time to kill before our train ride so we wandered up to the dinosaur trail. This was all Grant talked about on our drive to the museum!

Telling this Albertosaurus that he needs to be nice

ROAR!!!!!

Can you tell he's sticking his tongue out at me?

And then we wandered down to the wetlands are to hunt for turtles.

And we found some! A lot, actually.

Grant & Mama Day selfie! (I hate that word)
I don't think we'd ever been this sweaty but
we were enjoying our day together!

The bears and wolves exhibits are down near the wetlands so we tried to get a peek a them but they were all hiding. It was too hot for them too! So we circled back to wait for the train.

Train happy!

After our train ride and some lunch, we headed toward the "Catch the Wind" stuff. Grant vaguely remembered this from last year. He had so much fun in it, I don't know how he forgot. But when we got closer to the exhibit, it came back to him.  Before changing into his water clothes, we played with this seed dropper thing (I don't remember what it's called) since no one was there. It's like a big crane that drops oversized seeds so you can see how the wind takes them. Grant loved running around trying to catch the "seeds" as they fell.

So then he got changed and hit The Mist!

You wouldn't think that it will get you as wet as it does
(especially if you get down on your hands and knees like
Grant did and stick your face right in a mist sprayer).

(This one seemed a little dangerous to me...those
stones/steps were a little slippery!)

We spent a while in the mist. Besides the all the places that has mist coming out of  the ground, there are neat tunnels for the kids to explore (and get dirty, since now they're wet). It's such a fun part of the museum! 

Across from the mist, there is a spot tucked back in the woods with these mounted drum type things. You use them to shoot air at this shiny thing (for lack of a better word) and watch how it moves. We had a lot of fun there too (especially when Grant figured out where to aim and how hard to hit the drum)!

Next to the mist they've got a little pond with sailboats, so Grant tried that out (it didn't work out well).

After all that...I was ready to go. We stopped by the lemur habitat:

And then headed back toward the main part of the museum (and the exit). But Grant couldn't resist some more play time on the now empty playground.

We wandered around a little inside the main building.

Fun interactive wall

They have some animals inside, too, so we checked those out and then played with some of the hands-on stuff they've got going on in there. After some time inside, it was time to head home. I feel like he and I go to this museum a lot but he never gets tired of it. The new tree houses that will be opening some time this year. With Grant going to kindergarten this year, I told him that we'll try to go back to see the tree houses this fall when we both have a day off. We always have so much fun, I'm looking forward to going back!

Grant loves the "rocket ship" at the entrance.