Children's Museum and other Pumpkin Merriment

So it's been almost 3 weeks ago, but we've just been so busy with other Fall activities that I haven't had a chance to post about our trip up to the A.C. Gilbert Children's Museum in Salem. We went the afternoon of October 18th and it was a great family activity! The museum is made up of 3 large Victorian houses with a large playground sorta in the middle. The main house had a HUGE rocking chair on the porch, so of course we had to stop and take pictures - an "Edith Ann" moment on film!After that, our first stop was the BUBBLE ROOM. A fun idea in theory, but so messy. It was still pretty cool to make Ethan-size bubbles! But I'm not sure if it was a good or a bad idea to go to this room first. Ethan was too quick for us and his long-sleeve shirt was soaking with bubble solution after we'd only been there 5 minutes! It dried out by the third building, so it wasn't too bad.Next was the Body room - complete with giant, open-mouth face. The teeth were the size of Ethan's head. The next room Ethan LOVED! It was for children under 3 and had lots of books, climbing mats, farm animal toys, trucks, etc.Below is one of my favorite pictures from the day.
Other rooms included:

* Water Cycle room

* Jungle room (with stage, stuffed animal puppets, costumes and a camera so they could see themselves on TV)

* Storybook room

* China room (with Chinese tea set and a Chinese character writing station)

* Grocery store (with carts, plastic produce and a check-out scanner)

* Light/Shadows room

* Dinosaur room

* Train/Communications room

Here's some pictures from the rest of the day.

Steering the ship in the Water Cycle room.

Serving tea in the China room.

Sliding down the Dinosaur slide - a picture and a video clip!


Chasing the model train around the big track! We had to do this a couple of times!!


Finally we went outside for some fresh apple cider and apple wedges with carmel dip. We were too late for the petting zoo, but Ethan had fun on the huge playground. There's even a 2-story erector-set play structore with a 2-story slide - Mr. A.C. Gilbert himself was the inventor of the erector set (and is also considered the "man who saved Christmas" - click on his name for the Wikipedia info) among many other things. If it wasn't so dark, even Sean and I would've played! Ethan loved going down one of the shorter slides - much faster than the one at the park and always a big grin on his face when he got to the bottom.Our last stop was also outside - where they had live music for their 10th annual Harvest Festival and Pumpkin Merriment. They were also in the process of lighting all of the carved pumpkins from the day - you got free admission if you brought a carved pumpkin. We brought 2 and only had to pay Ethan's admission - a whopping $2.50. Not bad. :)
Their goal was 500 pumpkins. I'm not sure how many they got but there was a LOT of pumpkins there. Not the best smell when they're all lit, but still neat to see.

Here are the two (somewhat hastily carved) pumpkins we brought - vampire jack-o'-lantern and a star/moon.

Not too bad, but here's me with my favorite little 'punkin'!!