Party at the Museum

As I mentioned before, I decided to scale down from my usual party madness and just have a small, family party at home. But I still wanted to do something fun with their friends. Since pretty much all of their little friends are part of the moms' group, I kind of thought we would maybe just pick one of the fun places we had been thinking about going as a group and cover admission for that morning. But then we found out another moms' group attendee had a birthday the day after the twins, and we decided to jointly host a moms' group party. We picked the Kids N Stuff Museum (a place the group had been thinking about), and went for the full party plan (a bargain in my mind. The only thing we had to provide was lunch. It was so nice to have someone else do all the planning!). The museum was so great!

They had a huge train table, and it was definitely Ryan's favorite thing.

Allie tended to wander more, and since I followed, I got a lot more pictures of her at different stations. This was in the "glow" room with lots of different lights.

Two of the younger party attendees enjoying the toddler playground.

The water table was a HUGE hit. Such a huge hit that Allie was completely soaked from the waist up! She was especially thrilled with her yellow submarine (seen in her hand here). In fact, if you ask her about the museum, the first thing she says is, "They have a yellow submarine!"

Ryan quickly found a friend and they joined forces to catch fish.

There was a hospital area upstairs, and it was definitely a highlight, but there was a preschool there at the same time and they had it filled. Then they got called for lunch and our group rushed up to take over the hospital. Driving the ambulance was the biggest hit, but because the lighting was so different in the various areas of the museum, this is the only decent picture I got.

There was also an airplane cockpit (the front of the airplane stuck out of the front of the balcony). Here are the birthday kids flying the plane.

There was the giant, stuffed guy...with realistic, stuffed insides that you could pull out and examine. Which was sort of disturbing. All of the sudden we looked over and saw D sitting in his lap!

The music room was another of the twins' favorite. Allie is playing the piano below, but my favorite music room memory was Ryan playing the drums, while another kid danced, and Allie played the cymbals (jumping and kicking out her legs every time she clapped them together).

The grocery store was especially realistic. They even had coupons. Allie spent a lot of time shopping, checking out, putting it back, and shopping again :)

We joked that this was the biggest, coolest playpen. The kids climbed the stairs and ran around. They thought it was great and the parents loved getting to have 5 minutes of conversation knowing exactly where they were :)

Part of the party package was a special room for lunch. The museum provided Capri Suns, and the kids were so excited. These are a treat in our house - reserved for special occasions :)

I have amazing friends. They always check with me before they have parties to double check the twins' allergies and make sure they have food the twins can eat (they go as far as making special egg-free cupcakes for them). One of the moms told me that she was going to make special. egg-free cake pops to bring to the party. They were amazing. SO delicious (I'm going to have to get the recipe and see if I can convert it to cupcakes), and a huge hit. Why is food always more fun when it's on a stick?

The three birthday kids, eating their cake pops, all in a row :)

The twins had a blast. I hope all the other kids who came did as well (there were 10 total). I was so excited that the twins recovered enough from their sickies to go. In fact, they were so active the entire day that I was convinced that we were near the end! Then we had their 3 year checkups the next day and discovered that Ryan's pneumonia was worse and Allie had a nasty ear infection. Sigh.