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We were excited to join Rochelle and her daughter for a trip to the Seattle Science Center.  We went on a free admission (thanks to Fred Meyer) day.  It was nice to get to know Rochelle and see all the neat exhibits. This post is really picture heavy, so you’ll have to click on the link to read more (I didn’t want it to take over my blog).

They had gigantic robotic dinosaurs which I didn’t get any good pictures of, but here’s one of the girls in front of a robotic skeleton that demonstrates the concepts used in making them move:

Nicole was very scared of the robotic dinosaurs, and the bug exhibits.

They had a space section that had a gigantic floating globe.  Unfortunately, my picture doesn’t really show what it looked like, but I thought it was neat.

They also had a variety of other space/planet related exhibits which Isaac would have loved.

The first thing the girls seemed to really enjoy was the enormous chess set, although Nicole seemed scared of it at first too.

Here’s a picture of Nicole looking at the Robotic bug exhibit with fear.

They had an aquarium with diving beetles, a variety of bug-related exhibits, and a butterfly room.  The butterfly room was both neat and nerve-wracking at the same time.  The butterflies were everywhere, including the walls and floor and I was afraid that either I or one of my girls would squish one. 

Did you spot the butterfly in that picture?

The girls loved the play area that included a water play zone.

Charlotte thought the fun-house mirrors were funny.

They also had a music room where the kids could make a lot of noise music.

Ila’s favorite part was probably the slide.  She climbed up and slid down independently for as long as I’d let her.  Check out this super cute video:

Nicole seemed a little worried at first when she saw her image in this mirror, but eventually she started to shake her head and smile as she saw how her image bent and twisted with her movements.

I had packed cracker sandwiches for the kids to eat at lunch.  As the crumbs fell to the ground, the pigeons were not shy.  Charlotte thought this was amusing and started throwing cracker pieces to the pigeons as she ate.  Nicole was very wary of the birds.  Soon we gained the attention of some large seagulls.  It was neat to see the seagulls eat in one bite the pieces that the pigeons had taken several pecks to consume. One of the seagulls must have become impatient waiting for our leavings because it jumped right up on the table and stole a plastic bag with a half a sandwich in it.  It flew away from the table just a little and started to peck at the bag and eat the sandwich.  Nicole yelled "No, No, that’s my food! Don’t eat it, bird" as she watched the bird devour the sandwich.  It was a funny moment, but I decided we’d better pack up our things before the birds got any more aggressive!

After lunch we saw the rest of the exhibits and headed back to the play area so that the kid could play a little longer and we could sit and visit.  We decided it was time to leave about the time Nicole started dumping cups of water on her head!

Later, as Charlotte reflected on the day, she told her father “seagulls are like vacuums.”