From NC to PA...: Please Touch Museum (Take Two)

I'm officially on holiday vacation for 2.5 weeks!! Hoping to catch up on some recent December happenings as well as recap our 2013 holiday season before heading back to work in January.

First up is our recent trip back to the Please Touch Museum. The last time we visited, Nolan was only 9 months old and not walking yet! This time a whole new world of play was available to him, and we loved the museum so much that we signed up to be members this year so we will be sure to be visiting a ton to get our moneys worth!

The museum doesn't open until 11am on Sundays so we got there a bit before it was open yet and got to enjoy a pretty snowstorm starting (that turned into a massive snowstorm to everyone's surprise) and the museum wasn't too crowded yet when we got in.

Waiting outside in the snowstorm for the museum to open

Nolan spotted the play cars from the line waiting to get in and as soon as we got our tickets made a bee line to get to these cars!

Nolan the race car driver!

Nolan the bus driver!

Everything at Please Touch encourages pretend play and the car area was no different with a mechanic station set up to fix cars.

Daddy showing Nolan how to fix the car

Nolan sitting in a Nolan-sized tram

Next up: The space/science area! Much of this area was meant for older kids, but Nolan still found things to do :)

Trying out the balance beam and doing a great job.

Crawling through the space tunnel

Downstairs is where it's at in this museum. I absolutely love it. It has a whole mini city complete with kid-sized grocery store, construction site, movie studio, hospital, etc. It is really cool, and again each station has it's own dress up clothes :)

Nolan the mail man!

Delivering the mail

On to the construction site. Nolan loved this truck!

Loading up the cement blocks!

Dr. Nolan!

Helping Daddy with the groceries

Obsessed with the mini grocery cart

Time to put away the groceries in the kitchen

The staples: Goldfish and a banana!

Next up was the indoor carousel! We didn't know how Nolan would fare this time. Last time he liked it on the stationary horse, but this time we decided to go for it and try the moving horse. Our little fearless guy loved it!

Big boy on the moving horse!

He didn't want it to stop! Notice how outside is white out conditions!

To round out the trip, we stopped at the huge water tables and "toddlers only area". The water play is still a little too old for Nolan (he could barely see over the wall and couldn't reach much in the water yet. But he absolutely loved the toddler area and went through the tunnel and down the slide tons of times. Definitely a huge success!

Water area

Toddler only area

Although the day inside the museum was a success, getting home was another story. The snow accumulation took us by surprise (not much was predicted by the weather channel), and what was a 20 minute drive home turned into a 2 hour plus excursion with multiple changes in plan as we came across people stuck on the roads. Luckily we have an AWD SUV and had no problem - just worried about everyone else and getting through the chaos! The next post I'll share some winter photos of the results of the storm.

But first, the obligatory flash back to Nolan's last Please Touch visit to marvel in how much he has changed in 1 year...