We had a lovely visit last week with Dave’s mom, sister, brother-in-law, and their kids, Benjamin and Louis. Now we miss them, and we wish they lived closer. Move closer, cousins! Even though we don’t get to see them as often as we’d like (they live in California), the kids always pick right back up and have a great time whenever they’re together.

We hit a few of the big kid-friendly attractions while they were here, so I thought I’d do a couple of posts sharing the highlights.

First up we went to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. We have a membership here, and Amy and Craig have a membership to a science museum near home that has reciprocal admission benefits, so that made it a nice, inexpensive outing. They have a big central atrium with lots of light and dinosaurs, so we made everyone pose for a picture:

It’s like the dinosaur is going to eat them! Hilarious!

Abe was still very new to walking but just getting to the point where he preferred walking to crawling, AND he was wearing overalls, so he was EXTRA cute that day:

They have a temporary, traveling exhibit about whales at Fernbank right now, and you know we love whales:

I realized when we got in there that we’d actually seen the same exhibit a few years ago when it was at the Museum of Science in Boston. It’s nicely done with sort of a dual focus on science-y whale stuff and on the cultural impact whales have had throughout history, with a focus on the Maori in New Zealand.

Then we hung out for awhile at the relatively new kid space they have there. I really love this place. There’s a big treehouse themed climbing area and just tons of little activities packed in all over the place. Abe loved it, and the older kids did, too. We spent lots of time here:

We finished up in the area where there are bubbles and lasers and optical illusions and all that kind of thing. The bubbles were the biggest hit here:

When we were still planning the trip, Amy had mentioned that she’d like to go to a park where the kids could play in a creek, as such places are in short supply where they live.

So the next day we went to Leita Thompson park, close to our house, where there are some short (1-2.5 miles or so) trails, including one with a nice little creek along the way:

It’s Dave’s spring break this week, and we have an exciting project in the works (sneak previews available on Instagram), but we’re taking an enforced break from that right now because it’s been pouring rain for the past 20 hours or so. But I’m hoping I’ll be able to tell you more about that by next week at the latest!