LA Science Center

I feel like Paul has had more of his Saturday's free lately. It's been really nice and has really become a day where we can go out as a family and do fun things together. We usually start the day with some house cleaning. Paul's great at getting the kids excited to clean (a few marbles for their jars always help too). He usually tackles the downstairs (i.e., the floors) and I usually take the bathrooms and try to straighten the kids rooms some. It's much easier when it's more than just me working. Although I must admit that my favorite house cleaning is when I get to call Norma and she does it for me. It's not very often, but when she does come, my house is like heaven it's so clean. 

Anyway, how did I get so distracted from the topic. Back to the Science Center. I think I take my kids a lot of places and am willing to wrangle them just about anywhere. But the Science Center and me don't get along too well. I don't know what it is about that place. Maybe it's all the hands on stuff. Maybe it's because it's HUGE. Or maybe because it just has it in for me, but I have decided it's not somewhere I will go without some help. Even with Paul's help, we still managed to lose Brandon for about two (VERY LONG) minutes. He had just wandered off looking at all the many interactive play areas, but still. That place is VERY crowded and not somewhere you want to misplace a child. Let me tell you I was VERY happy to have Paul call me (as I was frantically looking around) telling me he had found him. After that, Brandon had to stay in the stroller for a while. Whew...my heart still starts racing just thinking about it. 

Other than that incident, it was a really fun day and the weather was just beautiful. Really, we couldn't have asked for a nicer day. 

We started out "lifting" the truck of course and then hit McDonald's inside the Science Center for a little ice cream (no wonder I haven't lost any weight this summer despite exercising so much. I eat too much ice cream.) Then we went out to the rose gardens to run around a bit. After that, we headed inside to look at as many exhibits as we could fit in, in the time we had there. I think we only saw about 1/2 of the place, but that's okay. There's always next time. Ashlyn could have stayed all day, but we had to get home so Paul could go see "Dark Knight" with some of his friends. Now usually it's me heading out to a movie, but I guess from time to time I have to let him go too. (Don't feel too bad for the guy. He sees plenty of movies at work...on DW's dime and while being paid for it.) 

Carter walked over to smell the roses all by himself. I thought it was so cute, I had to take a picture of it.

Ashlyn worked very hard on her arch. She wasn't too happy when Carter came and destroyed it.

Paul took the kids in the tornado force wind tunnel. Leah's hair was awesome flying all over the place. 

We spent a good amount of time in the Kids Discovery area, which was really nice because they only allow so many kids in at one time AND it's enclosed. So go figure I only took one picture in there. And it was of this tarantula. Haha.....

Our last stop was through the ecosystem area. We watched a video and walked around a bit. Our last exhibit was this desert with a flash flood. It was pretty interesting to watch the water all soak up into the "ground" and then come flooding out again with thunder and lightening. 

AND....that was it. Maybe we'll make another trip out there next summer. As long as I have Paul with me, I'm good to go.