MDM

On Friday morning I had some errands to run at Target, which is an hour away, so I figured we should make a day of our trip to Bangor. For Christmas Aunt Alexa bought us a year's pass to the Maine Discovery Museum! I've never been but I had heard it was great, so I packed some snacks and we went for a visit. (Excuse the poor picture quality--we rushed out the door and I left the real camera! These are all from my phone.)

Finnegan sat up to check things out.

I'll be honest, I was a little nervous at first because Madie kept asking, "The museum is like the zoo, right?" I kept saying, "Not really. I mean kind of, but there aren't any animals." I did not want to get there and end up with a grouchy Madie because it wasn't what she expected! It turned out I was nervous for nothing because they did have some animals--not a lot but they were Madie's favorites: reptiles!

Madie checks out an eastern painted turtle. Seriously, she could watch these all day.

They also had some lizards and fish. I don't know what it is about these animals, but she absolutely loves them. I used to take her to PetCo on really rainy days with Kaleb and I would suggest we go look at the cute little kittens or furry chinchillas, and she'd last for about 30 seconds then want to go look at the fish. (Kaleb just wanted to chase the dog toys.)

We spent a good chunk of time on the first level climbing around the beaver lodge, playing with boats in the stream and climbing up and down the raven's nest/giant tree. On the second story there were two sections: exporting and children's literature. Interesting little tidbit of information: Maine exports a lot of wood pulp and paper to Japan. Did not know that. There was also something about Brazil, but I didn't quite catch what it was because someone kept saying, "Look at me! I'm on the boat! Look! Mum! Look over here!

Lady Fiona was so cute working on the boat. 

They also had a big semi truck you could sit in and "drive" and press all sorts of buttons to get it to make sounds. Madie liked driving it; she did not like me pressing the buttons. Haha! I kept cracking up! Next time I'll get pictures. Finn enjoyed hanging in the hammock on the Brazil display. Loved it in fact. But the pictures all came out bad--next time.

On the storybook side, she spent lots of time running in and out of the lighthouse with a little boy, climbing in and out of the Goodnight Moon house, and steering this little dingy. She had the full Mac on but she took it off before I could snap a shot. She put the hat back on and told me, "It's okay, Mum, you can take a picture of me with the hat on." Why thank you, Miss Madie.

Another little bit of info: the Bangor Public Library has the highest per capita circulation of any city in the United States of 30,000 or more.

We spent two hours at the museum and didn't even get to the third floor. She was really upset when I said we had to leave. She wanted to look at the turtles some more and climb up that raven's nest again.

Sad face.

Not to worry Miss Madeleine. It's a year-long pass we can use over and over and over again. Thanks, Aunt Alexa!