Children's Museum Houston

One of our first days here in Houston we went to the museum and bought an annual pass.  It became our go to place for our summer days. We probably went to the museum 10 times in the two weeks before school started. It is a happy place for Calvin and when Calvin's happy I'm happy. Calvin is mostly old enough to play by himself and wander around which is nice. He met lots of new kids and overall it was a great experience for him. The girls are happy anywhere and everywhere so it worked well for them too.

The favorite spot in the museum for the kids is Kid City. The kids can get jobs at the various places (bank, grocery store, pet hospital, ambulance, restaurant) and earn money doing work. When they take a pay check they can put it on their ATM card.  Calvin loves his ATM card! It is now almost November and he has been holding on to the same ATM card since we first got here in August. His card has $7000 on it. When you start off the cards have $20 .Most kids will get a one or a few hundred dollars.
Lexey at the restaurant being my server.

Clare working as a cashier.

Jo is shopping

Calvin at the ATM ...he has spent many hours here!

There are lots of super heroes at the museum.

There is a spot in the museum that you can paint faces .. the kids love to be kitty cats!  Also there is a place where the kids do experiments. The girls have done a few. It is really neat.

Calvin working at the bank

Calvin working the register.

Downstairs in the museum you can build lego cars and race them. Jo made a car with no wheels and hers won every time! So funny. The other kids were all trying really hard to find decent wheels. There weren't many good ones which is why Jo's no wheel car worked just great compared to the others.

 Lexey decided to copy and tried a no wheels car too!

 We love to paint!

These are some of our favorites things to do. The girls also love doing the rock wall downstairs. 

One thing I didn't get pictures of but really like is building rockets out of paper and launching them or building flying things and putting them in the air tunnel.  Lots to do!  We still have a couple of areas of the museum we haven't explored yet.

Oil Ranch

We had such a fun outing to the Oil Ranch (farm/pumpkin patch) last weekend!  It was a great activity. I was totally shocked at the price and the fact that we now have to pay for all 6 of us to go places. It was 15/person so $95 for our entire family to go. Upon finding that out I probably would have turned around and gone home if it weren't for the fact we were meeting Dr. Jea and his family there!  But, it was a great farm and we were very happy with our choice of pumpkin patches so we decided to not begrudge the $ spent and enjoy our time together. It reminded us of our Ohio days where we could go to these fun seasonal festivities. 

The kids all enjoyed riding the horses. Lex is such a darling little person and always squealing with delight! Pure joy, enthusiasm and happiness!

Jo wanted to try the little horse and had a great ride. She wasn't scared.

 So on her next turn she decided to try the big brown horse! Amazing!

 Calvin was very reluctant to try this at first, as he is reluctant to try anything new, but after the girls did a few rounds and then we did other things he came back later in the day to have a turn. There are lots of opportunities for therapeutic riding here in TX and home in SD and I have wondered if it would be good for him. Probably not in the heat but perhaps....

There was a petting zoo. The goats were very active and running around like crazy. Lexey thought it was hysterical!

A big haystack to play on

Lexey and Calvin learned how to milk a cow! (Clare wouldn't come near it) and Jo enjoyed just feeding the cow!

 The girls and I went on a train ride while Calvin rested/ cooled off.

While we were in line for the hay ride jo bumped her face on the post and hurt her lip really badly. She got a bloody nose and her lip also bled a ton. We got out of line for ice, snow cones and a rest. We never made it back to the hay ride!

Then the kids played on this fun swing thing.

 Jo watched for a while before she was sure if she wanted to get on.

 At the end of the day we picked pumpkins

Group shot with our kids and the Jea's

 family photo! (some kids look hot...it was 90 degrees outside!)

 The cute Jea family.