How We Spent Independence Day

We started at the Lincoln Children's Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. This is a phenomenal children's museum with an array of options to entertain the children, starting with one of these ball machines to distract the kids while mommy and daddy pay the admission.


Ian (back) and Tory (front) are driving a play truck. They love trucks, but this didn't hold their attention long. Apparently they like looking at them more than driving them.


Tory is standing at a water display with several stations to teach him about how water flows.


Tory chose to experiment in the water station by chucking things in the water and watching the splash, an effect he was already familiar with.


Ian is posing in an oversized chair. He's always been the small one, but he's not that small anymore.


Ian poses with a play hardhat, proving the museum doesn't mind when children swipe objects from the various exhibits and run around the halls with them.


Abbie plays with the pin-screen...


And this is the result.


Next we moved to the Lincoln Children's Zoo. Here Abbie and Tory learn where milk comes from: Plastic cows.


Abbie enjoys a pony ride.


Ian enjoys a pony ride. Tory did not take a pony ride. Unlike his siblings, he didn't throw a tantrum when he saw the ponies. He'll learn.


Tory was fascinated by the bats, here seen in a blur in the top-left corner.


Tory and a meerkat stare at each other.


Abbie enjoys the rabbit at the petting station. Mommy is trying to teach Ian to use gentle pettings. The lesson didn't entirely sink in.


Abbie turns the guinea pig petting station into a pick-up-a-guinea-pig station.


Daddy and Ian pose in a (faux) eagle's nest.


Tory points to a butterfly in the butterfly garden, encouraging it in vain to land on his finger. Abbie loved the butterflies, but was thoroughly spooked when they fluttered up to her, apparently expecting nectar. She eventually tried grabbing a few, an activity frowned upon by the zoo.


Abbie emerges from an egg.


Ian emerges from his egg. Tory is elsewhere, emerging from his poopy diaper.


The zoo leaves feed stations for their freerange peafowl, a fact the local squirrel population enjoys.


After working the children into a screaming, cranky mess, we took the kids home for the day. The next day we travelled to Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo. Here Tory peers over a fence to watch a polar bear below.


I was able to get extremely close to a sun bear. I assume this was safe.


Abbie plays at a small waterfall, plugging a hole eroded by the water flowing down the concrete wall.


Tory watches the majestic artificial waterfall. He was probably looking for fish.


I never found out what kind of birds these are, but Tory watched them for about ten minutes.


The bird got tired of watching Tory before Tory tired of watching the bird.


I have to force one of my children into this pose on every trip to this zoo.


The kids rode the train while I walked across the zoo to this train station. Considering the kids were screaming by the time they reached the train station, I think I got the better deal. Tory and Ian are sitting with mommy while Abbie huddles with grandpa a couple rows behind them.