First we headed to the dinosaur exhibit. There were about 10 robotic dinosaurs set up along with other things. Taylor was in heaven. She LOVES dinosaurs.
The girls all had to play with this robot at the same time; fortunately, there were 3 buttons to push to move it, so they each got one to push. Taylor and Payden didn't want to leave this.
I finally convinced them to get down so I could take a picture of them in front of Taylor's FAVORITE dinosaur . . . Parasaurolophus.
I was only able to get one more picture of the three of them before Shelby went off with Tom, Jeremy, Madison, and Ryan to watch a demonstration on combustion. Taylor and Payden would NOT leave the dinosaur area, but I figured it'd be easier for them to stay than try to get them to sit through the demonstration.
One thing I learned about Taylor was that she's got no boundaries when it comes to strangers. She wanted to watch this movie and had no problems sitting by the bunch of strange kids who were initially sitting there. Later on, she would just squeeze in between a bunch of strange people so she could look at a display. They would look down at her like, "Who is this kid?" Ah . . . that's our Taylor. She also had no problem doing her own thing. Shelby would stick around with someone else, but Taylor was often by herself (being trailed by me of course).
Payden felt like this dinosaur footprint was hers. She tried to swat away another toddler who wanted to sit in it. At another point, a group of older kids came and sat down in it. She just sat there, frozen and looking down with this funny face that seemed to say, "What are those kids doing here? They need to get off of this now. Don't they know this is mine." She really would not leave this footprint. At least it was easy to keep track of her. For some reason though, she felt like she needed to take off her shoes and socks while she was sitting in it. I'm sure that part of the problem is she's not used to wearing socks, but I can't count the number of times I had to get her to put them back on.
After the combustion demonstration was over we headed to the next area, which was a space area.
Of course, Taylor, Payden, and I trailed after everyone else because I had a hard time prying them away from the dinosaur area. Taylor saw her cousin Ryan in this space capsule and decided to join him, so of course Payden had to follow suit.
We found this scale that you could stand on to find out how much you way on the different planets in the solar system. Shelby tried it first.
Then Taylor followed. We tried to get Payden to stand on the scale as well, but she just prefered exploring the base of the weight display area. I even tried to pick her up and do it, but she threw such a huge fit I decided it wasn't worth it.
We then had to leave this area to go stand in line to watch the IMAX show that we got to see for free with our tickets. We watched Shackleton's Antartic Adventure, which was about 28 men who tried to be the first to cross Antartica, but ended up getting stuck when their ship got packed in by ice and eventually crushed. They spent 2 years stuck in Antartica, but in the end all 28 men made it home alive. It was a really good story; unfortunately, Taylor and Shelby got bored pretty quickly . . . again, amen to snacks to help get them through it. Payden fell asleep, which was nice.
After the movie and a bite of lunch, we headed back to the next area, which was about Puget Sound.
Here Shelby got to touch shells and rocks and look at animals native to Puget Sound. There was also a display that showed how the current flows through the Sound and some other displays. They also had a kiddie area over here that Taylor and Payden enjoyed. It involved water, so of course we left the area a bit wet.
We then headed to the insect section, which included a butterfly atrium. We got to see some nasty bugs, including an assortment of live roaches. Ugh!! I hate roaches!!!! These were especially big and nasty. There was also a place where you could look and see how a bug sees you, 3D insect puzzles to do, and all sorts of stuff. After exploring the insect place for a bit, we headed to the butterfly area. It was a seperate area where the butterflies were flying all around you. Shelby eventually had one land on her, which she just thought was too cool. By the end, she'd had 3 butterflies land on her. The cool thing was that 2 of the butterflies that landed on her was the exact same butterfly the girls had learned about from the Nick Jr. show Go Diego Go - the blue morpho butterfly. We decided that the color of clothing must have helped to get a butterfly land on you because of the 4 people in our group who had a butterfly land on them, 3 were wearing green.
Taylor finally had one land on her. I couldn't tell if she was excited or scared to death of it, but she definitely liked being one of the ones to have had a butterfly land on her.
As we were leaving the area, Tom finally decided to take a picture of Payden's chubby little hand with the star that got stamped on it for reentry into the Center. The entire time we were at the Pacific Science Center she would just randomly come up to us, ask to look at our hand, and then say, "Star" "Mama's star" "Payden's." She LOVED those stamps and couldn't get enough of them.
The next area we decided to go to was about speed. It was definitely for a bit older crowd than Payden, but we found this, and she fell in love with it. It was this HUGE wheel that you turned 180 degrees, which turned the 3 tubes upside down. There was an object in each of the tubes that would fall down at different speeds because of the different kinds of liquid in each tube.
The green liquid was the slowest. I swear it took 3 minutes for that object to finally float down, but Payden sat and waited every time. The others were too fast for her to point to, but she loved waiting for the slow one to fall enough for her to touch it.
Meanwhile, Taylor was sitting at this area where you'd place objects, take a picture, move them slightly, take a picture, and repeat. Then you could play the pictures back in order like a movie (similar to doing a flip book). It was fun to do. I helped her at first and then left her to try it on her own. Later, I saw Tom over there later "helping" her do it. I could hear her asking him to let her do it. It was funny. Tom loves stuff like this.
Meanwhile, Payden was still over at this wheel thingy. I swear we were there for at least 30 minutes. We flipped it over and over and over again, and amazingly she never got bored of it. Maybe I should make something like this to keep her entertained during church. Other than TV or movies (she's a natural couch potato), I don't think I've ever seen her keep her attention on something for so long. This time around she sat down to wait, which I thought was toooo cute.
Shelby found this display where she got to make a sound movie, as she describes it. They would prompt her on what sounds to make, and then she would play the movie and it would have the sounds she'd recorded as part of the movie's sounds.
There were all sorts of other displays dealing with speed. This one involved some sort of driving. Shelby did one that involved a race between 2 cars. Finally, it was time to leave as the Center was closing.
It was a fun place to go, and in the end we still had TONS of exhibits that we weren't able to go to. You really could spend days in there trying to see everything. It was nice to mix fun with educational, too. What a great way to spend a day!
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