Children's Museum of Houston

Today it stormed all day, which put an end to our daily pool visit.  We had to find something else to do, so I looked up all the places in Houston where we could use our COSI membership, and then we headed to the Children's Museum of Houston.

Our first stop once we got there was the Fresh Cafe.  Unlike COSI, you cannot pack your lunch.  So, while we got in for free with our membership, I spent $30 on brunch and snacks and parking during our visit.



I'm not really complaining about that, though.  I had some black bean and corn tacos that were delicious!

After the Fresh Cafe, we visited Kidtropolis.  It is an entire pretend city.  There are all sorts of businesses, and when you do a job at one, you get a paycheck.  There is a bank where you can deposit your play paychecks, and each kid is given an account with a debit card.  There are ATMs all over the city, and you can spend your pretend money at the diner or the grocery store or the vet.  The really neat thing is the we get to keep the debit cards, and the bank accounts stay active from visit to visit.  The boys each opened an account and did jobs at the FedEx delivery center and at the stock market.  Connor made $50 trading sugar on the commodities market!

We played with these huge interlocking building blocks for probably an hour.  We built this small clubhouse first, and then we built one twice as big that both boys could play inside.

Another area that we spent a lot of time in was the outdoor water play area called Flow Works.  It was still drizzling rain a bit, so it didn't matter as much when the sprays from the exhibits went a little wide.  Or vice versa.

These flowers were outside near the water play area, and I have never seen anything like them before.  I want to grow them at my new house.  Any ideas on what they could be?



My guess is some sort of clematis, but I really have no idea.

There is also a children's theater in the museum, and we saw a live performance of a super hero drama.  There was singing and dancing and grown up actors.  It was really well done, and I think it was Lex's favorite part.  I expect that we will see many more performances in that theater.

We probably only saw half of the exhibits on the main level, and we never even set foot into the lower level.  So, we must go back.

Fortunately when we left, it had stopped raining.  We got soaked on our way into the museum earlier in the day, so I took this photo on the way home.  Note that the boys each have a milk carton for the ride home.  The Fresh Cafe is the only area we visited twice!