Mini Vacation - Day 2

Day two of our Dad-Free mini vacation started early.  5:30am to be exact (thanks Peter).  By 6am my efforts to keep him quiet had failed and he had woken up his siblings, so I put Ice Age back on the TV while I got everyone dressed to go to breakfast (and then the pool).

By 7:30am the kids were begging for food, so we headed down stairs to hit up the breakfast buffet.  The kids ate more bacon and pancakes than a grown person would eat, but were shockingly well behaved for the meal.

After breakfast we stopped at the bathroom for a potty break and to change Campbell into her bathing suit.  While we were in the bathroom Campbell asked to sit on the potty... and POOPED!!!  WHAT?!?!?  Please understand that potty training was an uphill battle for my older boys and the prospect of a child who might be potty trained BEFORE the age of FOUR is AMAZING (ease off the Caps Lock lady).

After the party in the bathroom, we hit up the pool and swam for the next two hours until the kids were all raisin-y and cold and we needed to get ready to check out of the hotel.

I got the kids a quick bath and dressed for the day and Campbell promptly fell asleep (pooping in the potty will do that to a girl).  I let the boys watch TV while I got showered, dressed and nursed the baby.  Then it was time to wake up sleeping beauty and head out to the local Children's Museum.

The Hands-On House Children's Museum was Awesome!  We spent 2.5 hours enjoying the exhibits, but could have spent much more time there.  I highly recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in the Lancaster, PA area with kids 2-10 years old.

Here are some of the things that they liked most:

The "Pond Area" - In this section they had a boat racing station where the tables were like air hockey tables and blew air up to move little boats around.  You could push a button to make the air blow harder and race the boats.  There was also a fishing section with magnetic fishing poles to catch fish.  After catching the fish you were supposed to measure them, with the goal of catching a 10 inch fish.

The next section that the kids spent a lot of time at was the farming section.  In this section, they played with a wooden farm, pretended to drive a tractor, milked a cow, harvested corn and more.

Next the kids sort of split up.  Peter was really interested in dressing felt snowmen.  He had baskets of hats, scarves, gloves and various shaped buttons to decorate the snowmen with.

Mean while, Campbell and Aaron played in the "How Many in 20?" section where they tried to kill "germs" (it was a lesson in the importance of washing your hands for at least 20 seconds).

Next stop, was the Make- Believe stage area.  The kids dressed up in costume and Peter and Aaron put on a dragon slayer play for Campbell, Steven and me.

Next stop was the Engineering room where we made tubes into a track for whiffle balls, put toys together and did quality assurance checks using an assembly line, and much more.  I could write an entire post about this section alone, but I am getting tired.

After lot of engineering fun, we went food shopping.  The market had laminated shopping lists that the kids used as the "shopped", filling up their baskets.  Campbell enjoyed playing cashier.

The last stop on the tour of the museum was the face painting station.  Needless to say, we all (and I mean all) left looking... interesting.

The exhibits I described weren't even all the exhibits.  There was also a tree house, an igloo making station, a post office and more.  We would have stayed longer, but we had one last stop on our agenda - The Turkey Hill Experience!  Keep in mind we ALL had face paint on - so we got a few stares.

Turkey Hill started with a video about what we would be doing - creating our own ice cream flavor, designing the container and then recording a TV commercial for your ice cream flavor.  Along the way there were lots of fun games and activities to entertain the kids.

The best part was making the commercials.  Both boys are total hams, so the second the camera was on, their personalities came out. I am having trouble accessing the videos online, but Aaron's ice cream flavor can be found by clicking here.

Designing their Ice Cream labels:

After we finished our tour and creating our flavors and commercials we got to the best part - trying some Turkey Hill ice cream!  The boys both wanted mint chocolate chip, Campbell got peanut butter and I had coffee flavor - all were delicious!  We also got to sample Turkey Hill ice teas and lemonades.

We left right as they were closing and got in the car to head home and back to reality.  It was an amazing trip and we can't wait to plan more Mini Vacations.  Although next time we might have to invite Brett, who was very jealous of all the fun we had!