Discovery Center

Forgot to finish my vacation week... oops! Well, on the way home from the Smokies, we met Jeanne and Steve and family (Dave's sis+) in Murfreesboro, TN at the cooooolest children's museum. I highly recommend it, for those that are local- it's about an hour and a half from us. The kids loved loved everything. There were so many cool new things to discover and do.

Jon hanging out...

(I know, weird lighting, I should have edited these better)

Ben and Caleb playing on a real firetruck! They had the gear they could put on and everything- these two just wanted to drive it!

Oliver and Chris digging for fossils...

Fixing a car- this was the coolest and I think their favorite thing. There were all kinds of things to fix- wheels with lugnuts to unscrew, a velcro attached muffler, fluids to fill. It was very awesome. For this one they had to don the gear...

Jon was so cute playing with the wooden cars. He's still so little and just learning to sit up well, so it was kind of fun to see him sitting playing with big toys like that.

Okay, actually this might have been Ben's favorite. A market play area. He loves to play store. He was having fun ringing up everyone's produce.

Caleb just liked loading up the baskets and sending them down the belt by turning the big wheel.

Chris got in on that action...

He and Oliver had fun with it...

This was a cool shovel thing (no clue what that piece of equipment might be called) where you worked the "controls" and scooped up rocks with it.

A little reading area with a basket full of books. Chris was very interested in this. He loves to sit and look at books.

A treehouse...

Oliver just bein' cute as usual...

Chris wasn't feeling well on this trip, but this day he was feeling a lot better, especially later in the evening when he finally wanted to eat.

It wore Jon out... :)
Chris reading more books with "Apple Steve" (he calls them Apple Jeanne and Apple Steve... not sure why? My theory is that it's his version of uncle...)

They had a realllly cool water play area. We did that last. They got a little wet :)

It was the coolest place. I didn't get a picture of it, but there was this huge tube slide going from the second floor down to the first. So many fun things for them, we had a great day. 

We ended up with dinner at Fazoli's (mmm, breadsticks) since we don't have any local to us anymore and a stop at the Nestle Tollhouse bakery in Athens, which in my opinion should have been a whole lot yummier.... so no recommendation there!