A Day to Play // The Iowa Children's Museum

Last weekend was good on so many levels.  It began with a wildly rainy Friday (close to five inches in a day, to be exact), my idea of a perfect excuse to close out our week with all the comforts of home.  We locked the doors and pulled the drapes, put on our coziest pajamas, ordered pizza, and had big bowls of buttery popcorn for dessert.  We watched Big Hero Six for the sixtieth time, piled under blankets, and ended the night burrowing into our beds while the rain lulled us to sleep.  There are few things in life more satisfying than crawling under those sheets knowing a Saturday morning awaits.  

With no real plans for our Saturday, it was Beau's idea to go away for the day and explore something new.  I loved this idea, for I knew if I stuck around home I'd be pulled in numerous directions that would distract me from that precious family time we were blessed with this weekend.  In keeping up with my goal to play more intentionally this school year, we decided to drive to the Iowa Children's Museum in Coralville.  We had never been and have only heard great things, so we packed up the car and headed down I-80, our only goal to play hard and have a great day with our kids.  

I'm not sure which one of us loved this place more.  It is literally fun for all ages (Beau and I often wondered why so many kids were distracting us from our play :), and we spent the majority of the day moving from exhibit to exhibit exploring and experimenting in our own little world together.  We got groceries at the market, made pizzas at the pizzeria, gave each other lots of x-rays at the hospital, discovered secret passageways in a castle, raced derby cars, flew airplanes, and built rocket ships, all before dinnertime!  We left our phones in the car and spent the day just following their lead, making them laugh, and pretending we were kids again.  I told Beau I would have absolutely died over the makeshift market and pizzeria when I was a little girl, and I'm pretty sure he felt the same as he designed and built his own wooden car to race down the track.  As for Mila and Cruz, they loved it all but had some favorites, too.  Mila loved playing nurse with the babies in the children's hospital, and Cruz had a blast playing cashier at the market and then flying a plane in the aviation center.

We played until the kids started getting cranky and lured them out of the museum with a promise for Whitey's ice cream before we headed home.  We stopped by Rob and Jill's in North Liberty, and got home just after dinner time.  Cruz woke up the next morning asking when we could go to the museum again, and we already have plans up our sleeve for another visit around his birthday week.  

More pictures of our Saturday adventures...