Visiting the Greensboro Children's Museum

Today the whole family met the McNeils at the Greensboro Children's Museum for a day of fun. The girls had a blast! As for me, whenever I go to one of these places I go back and forth between saying, "Wow! This is the greatest place in the world! If you lived near here, you'd never have to buy any toys at all! Just come here most every day!" and saying, "Uh! This is WAY too much stimulation for any child! What happened to the simplicity of Laura Ingles?!?" Ha!
The coolest thing about this museum was the vast number of REAL vehicles that were set up for the children to explore. Here the girls are in the firetruck. Eventually we even got Annie to try on the fireman boots!

And there was a REAL cockpit of an airplane as well. Or, actually, it was the whole FRONT of an airplane, including the first row of seats and the jumpseat (which we were really glad to get the real skinny on from Miss Laurie, who was a career flight attendant).
Annie's activity of choice was the sand, which included a real boat and a mock-up of the Cape Hatteras light house.

At one point, Annie and I entered the doctor and dentist area, and Annie gave the teddy there a good brushing!

And she did some exercises.
Now, Leia's activity of choice was definitely these "Kapla" blocks, . . .

Another one of Annie's favorites here was this little ball roller coaster (for lack of a better term). Except Annie always avoided the top tunnel, . . . not being able to figure out that you could also put the ball in standing beside it, instead right in front of it. She's funny about things like that.

Then there was the pencil box painting which was fun (and messy), . . . both of which we forgot at the end of the day. : (
And Annie, Leia, & I spent lots of time in the 1/2 scale real house where she fed the baby lots of bread, cheese and cake.
And then there was this area that reminded me SO much of Green Acre Farm and Leia Rose collecting the eggs from under the hens, that I just HAD to have Annie repeat the experience. Except, for Annie, these stuffed animal hens were simply in the way (and I had to keep her from simply shoving them on the floor and dumping the eggs into her basket). Ha!
But it was THIS that was the highlight of the day for Annie (and consequently for me as well). We ate at the local Greensboro diner for lunch on Main Street, and the owner (who fell in love with little Annie) came over every minute or so to entertain us with music and dancing straight out of the 1950's! : ) Annie was enthralled! The guy just couldn't believe that this 1 1/2 year old knew how to ask for fries!!! Ha! And when we exited the diner, Leia Rose said, "I really liked your dancing!" and Annie chimed in with a rousing "Bye!!!" : ) [And here just let me say that is has only been within the last month or so that it has been ANNIE that has been getting the attention of servers, while Leia Rose silently sits on the sidelines with a smile on her face. Up until this point, Leia Rose has been the focus of all attention and Annie (although admittedly cute) was most likely viewed as a "toxic food cleanup" type of situation. Ha! Needless to say, it's been interesting to witness this change and perhaps even more interesting to witness Leia Rose being such a good big sister in the balance.]