Day 6--The Great Pacific Northwest Adventure

Day 6--Tuesday, June 30th--dental x-ray chimes in The Garage, Portland Children's Museum, and rare photos of the illusive, invisible Mama

Tuesday morning, we took the excellent Trimet train into Portland, to visit The Children's Museum. It was quite small and reminded me of Kohl's Children's Museum in the Chicago NW suburbs. The kids had a ton of fun with all the hands on activities.

Favorite line of the day:
Me--"Where's your bathroom?"
Desk Clerk--"Down the hall to your left. It's our most popular attraction. "

Our actual most popular attraction was "The Garage". It's a workshop full of recycled objects, hot glue guns, drills, tools and art supplies, for kids 6 and up. We made picture frames, works of art for Auntie Maia and John, and the piece de resistance..............a wind chime from tiles, bottle caps, rafia, a spoon and a bunch of dental x-rays!

The kids also thoroughly enjoyed the theatre. All those years of volunteering in the box office at Facets Multimedia have sunk in! The kids hammed it up, old school style, and I was reminded of the numerous plays we made up in my childhood. All the neighborhood kids and visiting cousins would don dress up costumes and put on elaborate, largely improvised shows.Dad even got in on the action and played along on his favorite instrument. The little theatre was especially fun, because of a tech booth with dials for sound effects, music, and colored lights.

We heard stories and participated in a sing along at the story tree, designed with glowing blocks, made art works, and clowned around.
Dug was even a willing victim at the face painting booth!They also had an ever popular water play area. This one had some unique twists, like drums you could play with rubber ducks and ceiling mops. I liked the odd, creative touches, like a shoe as a water scoop.
There are even a few photos of the rare, illusive, invisible Mama! I'm usually fine with the kids as the main focus of my photos. After all, they're the cute ones who grow and change on a near daily basis. But, on my own Mother's request for more trip photos of me, I began to browse through the hundreds we took........on 4 cameras. And I can count the number of pixs of me on my hands. And most of those are blurry, distant and/or terrible! I'm afraid, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, the kids would grow up and not remember what I looked like! Maybe I'll find an adult friend, more adept at photography than Dug, who can take a whole slew of shots. Then I'll learn to photoshop my head into all the events I'm perpetually missing from. Sigh....the price of being "official photographer".