Manchester Adventure

Taking advantage of our vacation time together as a family we made the trek down to Manchester a few days ago and visited the See Science Center for the first time ever.  Over the last couple of years we've used Christmas or Birthday money to buy a pass the the Montshire Museum of Science.  Our boys love this museum and we've been so lucky to be able to visit it on a nearly monthly basis for a while now.  When our membership ran out in January we decided to use this money towards something different this year.  We learned about something called a reciprocal pass to all of the museums (over 500) in the Association of Children's Museums and Association of Science - Technology Centers.  This means our family of four has unlimited access to children's and science museums all over the country - including the one we go to in Portland when we visit Brian and Sarah, the one in Dover that we just went to last week, the Boston Children's Museum, the Harvard Museum of Natural History and many, many more.  The Manchester museum is "free" for us now that we have this pass so we thought we'd check it out!  The boys had an absolute blast! 
Here they are digging for fossils...

 These guys loved the huge soft blocks.  We made lots of houses and towers and knocked them down!

One of the biggest highlights of the museum was the gigantic Lego project that is up on permanent display.  According to the website, this is the largest permanent Lego installation at minifigure scale in the world! 

 This is what Manchester's Amoskeag Millyard looked like around 1900 (by 1915 the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company was commonly recognized as the largest textile manufacturer in the world)!  It was fun to learn a little history and see this incredible display up close and personal.  The detail is unbelievable.  I think Scott was in heaven as much as the boys were! 

A cool pulley system where you lift yourself up...

Kaleidoscope fun!

 Camden was adorable and stood in line to participate in a special chance to "walk on the moon."  He's usually really shy about trying something new like this and being independent of us, and he was so cute and brave stepping up to the plate.  We were very proud of him and he loved it!

 Go Camden!

 Overall, a wonderful experience.  We will miss visiting the Montshire as often as we have in the past, but what a great opportunity to visit so many new and different places for essentially the same price as our pass to the Montshire was.  YAHOO!!!!

 Three more days of vacation and then back to reality!  :(