Life, Love, and Marathons: Trip to the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh

We had made plans a month or so ago to meet my friend, Emily, and her daughter, Kendall, at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh on Sunday. We wanted to get there close to when they opened and since we had a little over 3 hour drive to get to Pittsburgh, we decided to drive up to visit and stay with Todd's parents on Saturday so we only had about an hour drive on Sunday morning. We had a great, although short, visit with his family; we went to our nephew's indoor soccer game, went out to dinner with my in-laws, and celebrated Todd's birthday a week early with some apple pie. We even got an extra hour of sleep with daylight savings! Our girls never seem to be affected by the time change so we actually got an extra hour of sleep too which was nice since we stayed up late to watch the OSU football game....ok, well Todd stayed up the watch the whole game, I went to bed in the 3rd quarter.

We got up on Sunday morning, had breakfast, packed up the car, and made the drive to Pittsburgh where we met Emily & Kendall who were coming from Cleveland. The children's museum was fantastic! There were a lot of fun exhibits, both for the girls & Todd (I think he might have had more fun than Lucy & Kendall; Em & I looked over at him at one point and he was totally in his own world playing), and Em & I were even able to spend some time together hanging out. Lucy's favorite exhibit was Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood (no surprise there) and she spent a lot of the time dressing up as each character. Lucy & Kendall were even able to meet Daniel Tiger! I can't forget about Cece too who was such a trooper and was pretty much just along for the ride. We were at the museum for almost 4 hours and she fussed for just a few minutes when she was getting tired and wanted to go to sleep. We popped her back in the stroller, started walking around, and she was out for awhile.

Em & I with our girls

We started in the Studio where the girls painted, played with clay, and made silk screen artwork

Emily holding Cece while watching Kenny paint

Lucy's masterpiece

Playing with clay

Cutting out shapes for the silk screen

Our next stop was to Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood which was super cute! Lucy was so excited that she just kept running from thing to thing to play with; she didn't want to miss anything!

Mr. Rogers' original jacket and shoes

The character cut outs all talked if you pulled up and down on their arms; Lucy also found the dress up area and put on Katerina Kittycat's skirt

Then, she dressed up as Daniel Tiger...

Prince Wednesday...

Miss Elaina...

and finally, O the Owl

When we first got to the museum, we had to sign up for a time slot to meet Daniel Tiger so we headed down to the Theater when it was our turn; while Lucy, Kendall, Emily & I waited in line, Todd sat with Cece

Hugs for Daniel

Lucy holding his hand

The next exhibit we went to was the Attic where they had a gravity room (it was tilted and was kind of like an optical illusion; needless to say, we were falling over and laughing a lot) and some fun slides

Todd found another old pair of Mr. Rogers' shoes

The last exhibit we made it to was the Garage, which was Todd's favorite! There was another slide to go down, pulley systems, parachutes, a car to sit in, and lots of other things to explore that drive or fly

Manually moving the treadmill which then moved a bunch of cranks and wheels above it

Lucy & Kenny driving

Cece after she woke up from her nap

We left the museum around 2:00 PM and before driving home, stopped at Primanti Bros. for a late lunch/early dinner. Once we were done eating and were officially on the rode back home, we only had to make one quick bathroom/feeding (for Cece) stop before getting home just a little before 7:00 PM.

Primanti Bros. is known for their sandwiches which they top with french fries and coleslaw; Todd got a fish & cheese sandwich...