Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine

Mal and the kids flew out west a couple of weeks ago, and I got to drop them off to the airport in Portland (3 hour drive). Due to the flight time, we decided to make a day of it and go to the Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine. The idea was to get these kids good and tired for the flight to help ease Mal's travel stress while having one last family hurrah.

We walked in the door, and in the room to the right we saw a bunch of balls on the floor with at least 30 basketball hoops on the wall. For a man with a basketball obsession, Finn was in absolute heaven! The past few months he has even been saying "basa-ball", distinguishing the basketball from other types of balls.

There were a few ramps in the room as well.

Additionally, there was a face painter on hand.

There were all kinds of fun things to play on. I would say a good portion of the museum was Maine-themed with lots of outdoorsy things (bouldering wall, saw mill, camp site, lobster boat), but there were many that didn't feature anything remotely close to Maine.

Finn working the mill.

Don't mess with mama moose!

This was the split-second I could get Finn to wear the hard hat.

Madie loved the cockpit of the space shuttle. When we were there, I overheard one of the dads say to his kid "Yup, we don't have these anymore thanks to Obama." Disgruntled, are we?

Lots of things to climb on.

Madie was tuning up the car for me.

...meanwhile in the land of balls....Finn would be playing somewhere in the museum then instinctively run back to this room. Hands-down, the favorite.

Gassing up. She was making sure it was running good for me.

They even had a cool fire truck to play in!

And the garb.

They loved using the siren (modified slightly, of course) and strobes.

What a fun day.