Minnesota Children's Museum Updates!

I attended the Minnesota Children's Museum SmartPlay Ambassador program kick-off meeting at the museum last weekend and had a great time! I met the other 2014 ambassadors, got to know them a bit and we learned more about the new and exciting changes coming to the museum for this year and beyond. 

The most exciting change is that the museum will be expanding and renovating and the artist renderings of the new museum look amazing. It won't be until 2017, but I'm already excited to bring my kids there (Sophie will be 9 and Jack will be 7-- so hard to imagine). The multi-story play structure in the middle is the most intriguing to me.

Another exciting piece of news is that the museum will have a Thomas the Train exhibit in June 2014! Almost every little kid I know loves, so this will be a very popular exhibit. I'm proud of fact that our local children's museum creates so many of the amazing traveling exhibits for other children's museums all around the country.

Other upcoming exhibits include the return of Creativity Jam in May 2014, the last round of Clifford the Big Red Dog in September 2014 (and then Clifford will be going into retirement) and Sid the Science Kid in January 2015.

Right now, the museum is featuring a brand new Dinosaur exhibit. My kids had so much fun climbing on the dinos and checking the place out. Sophie learned about dinosaurs last month in kindergarten and we've visited the dinosaurs at the Science Museum, so we thought this exhibit was perfect. Another exhibit that recently opened is called Native Voices and teaches kids about the Native American tribes in the state of Minnesota. 



Hawaii

Bryan and I recently returned from a wonderful trip to Hawaii. We flew into Honolulu and took a 7 day Norwegian Cruise and visited Maui, Hilo, Kona and Kauai. The weather was warm and sunny with temps in the 80s. It was nice to get away from the snow and frigid weather of Minnesota for a little while. Linda came and stayed with the kids while we were gone.

Here we are enjoying frozen margaritas at the sail away party!

 

We took a tour of Honolulu city and saw the King Kamehameha statue by the Iolani Palace.

We also took a tour of Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial.

One of my favorites experiences was surfing at Poipu beach in Kauai. It was hard work padding out into the ocean and catching waves!

Another amazing experience was seeing the Na Pali Coast from our cruise ship. It's definitely one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

In Kauai, I took a movie tour and saw the famous Kīlauea Point Lighthouse. It was such a gorgeous view. 

Here's another view of the coast in Kauai. In case you can't tell, Kauai was definitely our favorite island. It was so peaceful and beautiful.

In Hilo, we visited Volcanoes National Park and walked on lava rock.

Here is a Hawaiian shave ice with mango, pineapple and passion fruit syrups. Inside, there's a scoop of vanilla ice cream and there's sweet cream drizzled on the top. So delicious!

I made this lei in a class on the cruise ship. They offered some interesting Hawaiian cultural classes and demonstrations.

Here's a picture of our ship. We had such a fun vacation and would highly recommend the cruise as a way to see so many different parts of the Hawaiian islands. Aloha!