National Children's Museum

In our attempt to find new indoor fun for Lauren and Olivia, we decided to brave the Saturday morning crowds at the National Children's Museum (NCM) with our good friends, the Castle Family.  Nate and I went to the Academy with Brett, and he's an Arizona native like me, so it's always fun to catch up with him and his family whenever possible.

The museum was doing an exhibit on different modes of transportation from around the world.  The one the kids were drawn to most was the motorized bike taxi that's utilized across Asia.

Monroe and Olivia "taking" a taxi ride

Olivia wanted to take her shot at driving too...

Here Olivia is trying to mimic Lauren's current face she does for all pictures - fish hooking each side of her mouth. Sooo cute ;)

Can you tell that Olivia is very fond of Monroe?! She was stuck to her side like glue for a while.

They also had a mock-up of a fire truck and fire fighter gear for the kids to try on.  Waiting to take our turn to try on the clothes and sit in the driver's seat was probably the most trying part of our visit to NCM.  Lauren still has a lot to learn in the patience department, as does Olivia.  At least we didn't witness any "not-taking-turn tantrums" while we were playing with all the exhibits, which was very surprising with how packed the museum was...

Lauren the fire fighter!

I somehow missed getting pictures of the girls operating the miniature ship loading crane, as well as playing dress up in kimonos and pretend shopping in a village market.  Fail on my part, but I'm sure we'll make return trips in the near future.  I'll make up for it then with some photo taking overkill! ;0)