Free Fridays

The Hickory Science Center has free admission on Fridays. Link and I take advantage of this often! It is such a fun place to take him, and I know he loves it. We went last Friday, and it reminded me of the Children's Museum in Portland. I haven't blogged about it yet, and it will give me an opportunity to post pictures of Lincoln (which I never do).

The day after Christmas, Dave's parents and the 3 Shinsels took a 4 hour road trip to Portland. We stopped at the zoo first. As we were parking, we saw this lovely train.




For those of you who don't know, Lincoln LOVES trains. He makes train noises, he prefers to play with trains, he likes to watch trains on tv, and he has lots of train books. So, it was a chore to pull him away from the train to go inside the zoo. The only way we got him to do it was telling him there was a train inside the zoo (which there really is!). I wanted to make it to the monkeys because they give the primates presents the day after Christmas. The workers decorate their cages and have wrapped broccoli and other goodies for the animals to open. I was so excited we made it to the chimpanzees just in time to see the workers decorate the cages. When they were all done, they let the chimps out. Link and I were standing in front of the females. They were totally lame and took their presents where we couldn't see them anymore. So, Link and I headed over the males, right when they let them out. The bigger male came barging down and was so excited to see the presents, he let out some loud chimp noises and banged on the glass a couple times. I could feel Link tensing up, but thought he would be ok. THEN, some scared kid started crying. That was it...Link started hysterically crying. It took a while to calm him down after that! At least I know what his nightmares are about now.

It was freezing at the zoo, so we left for some food, extra layers of clothing, and for naps. We took care of everything but the naps, Link refused to sleep. I swear he was too excited for what was about to happen...we were going on an actual steam engine train ride at the zoo! They only run the train during the summer and for a couple weeks during the Holidays. The zoo is decorated with tons of lights, and the train goes around the zoo to see all the lights, which takes about 15 minutes. I didn't think we were going to make it on the first train ride around, but we were so stinkin' lucky to get the last seats...right in back of the engine. Ok, maybe I was more excited than Lincoln, but we seriously had the best seats.

We saw all the lights and we heard the engines whistle and we saw the whistle's steam and then we saw this...

Classic huh? He was so wiped out, he fell asleep for the last 5 minutes of the train ride.

The next day, we went to the Children's Museum, which was just as cool as the zoo. Why is everything so much MORE fun when you have kids? They had this water play area, where we spent lots of time.

They also have a play area for kids under 3. Lincoln had fun in that room looking at the fish and going down the slide. Here he is posing with his Grandma and Papa.

We had so much fun in Portland and we will continue having fun on Free Fridays!