Discovery Museum Trip with Dee and Dude

 Yesterday Paige, Virginia and I went to the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum in Winchester, VA with Dee and Dude.  The girls and I got up, ate breakfast and headed out to pick up Dee and Dude and then went to Winchester.  

The museum is on a pedestrian mall and in front of the store next to the museum there was a big, inflatable frog, or frog frog as they're called in our house.  Virginia ran right up to it and dove into it.  I was afraid she was going to pop the poor thing.  Thankfully it was strong and could hold up to their loving.  Oh, and I put their hair in pigtails for the first time.  They'd come home from daycare with their hair in multiple ponytails, but yesterday was the first time I had done it.

Please excuse the quality of these pictures.  Apparently the camera lens desperately needed to be cleaned.

The museum had a bunch of cool things with which kids can play.  Virginia liked trying to drive this wooden truck.

This room had a climbing wall, which was a bit much for Paige and Virginia, but they did really enjoy running around and playing with the tire pieces that made up the floor.

Virginia had a great time spinning this bicycle wheel.  The girls really had so much fun playing with all of the different things at the museum.

Big Head Paige!

And her sister, Big Head Virginia!

These things were cool.  All kinds of little interlocking wheel magnets that the kids can put on this board and then spin them around.  I was having fun playing with it and then I had to stop so that Virginia could play with it.

This was another magnetic board thing Paige was playing with along with Dude.  They had pieces of metal that you could stick to the magnetic board and then they had this chain that Paige and Dude hooked to something on the board and then Paige pulled on it.  She loved it.

This was another favorite.  This was in the simple machines area of the museum and is an example of a pulley system.  They had a conveyor belt on a slope and there was an apple crate and apples on the conveyor belt.  You pushed the crate down the belt and then used the rope to pull it back up.  The girls didn't quite figure out how to do it, but they had a wonderful time running up and down the ramp.  Here's Paige helping Dee get the crate to the top of the ramp.

And here are Paige and Virginia running down the ramp after the crate.

 

There was also a room in the museum where you could build your own roller coaster.  We didn't do any building, but we did play with the roller coaster tracks that were already set up.  Paige and Virginia thought it was pretty cool to watch the ball roll down the track.

 And there was a medical room that had stretchers and old x-rays (of animals) and other old medical equipment.  It was pretty neat and Virginia and Paige had fun playing in there with Dude and Dee

 After we finished playing at the museum we went and had some lunch and walked around the mall a bit before we headed for home.  When Paige, Virginia and I got home we sat in the parking lot for awhile because this is what the back seat looked like when we pulled in our parking spot.

We had a really good time at the museum and I imagine there will be plenty more trips there in our future.