Soccer in the rain...Tellus in the rain....

Noah posing before his soccer game. It ended up raining again.
Not terribly, but enough to need an umbrella and change of clothes afterward.

You can see his hair is a little wet.
He was actually not "in" during the heaviest rain and was under an umbrella.

Before we left this morning, I got on facebook and saw that a few people had posted that they were going to visit a local museum as part of the Smithsonian's Free Museum Day. All we had to do was fill out a form, print out a pass and it was good for one person plus a guest. I signed both Corey and myself up and we decided to head over for a visit after the game and lunch. This museum opened up this past spring (I believe) and we had not visited yet. I was so glad that my friends posted that they were going because I had totally forgotten that it was free day.

It was VERY soggy when we arrived. They were directing traffic into the hotel parking lot next door because it was so crowded and we hiked across a VERY wet field around mud puddles and water to get to the door. When we got there, a sign on the door told us that only one pass was allowed per family. I was slightly annoyed because we had trudged across the muddy field and would not have come on such a very crowded day if we had known we were going to have to pay for any of us.
Well, as we were standing there calculating how much it would cost, a man came over and said, "If you will come over here we had another line where they are trying to expedite the process."
The man at the end of that line came over and asked for our pass and asked how old our kids were. We told him and he said, "Do you have an extra pass?" And we did, because I had printed one for both Corey and myself. He said, "Each pass is good for two people." And he gave us stickers for all four of us to wear, so we didn't have to pay after all! YAY!!!!!!

The Tellus Museum has a little bit of everything. Our first stop was the dinosaur exhibit.

Katie and Noah enjoyed getting to touch some fossils. Katie even touched what they said was dinosaur poop! lol. She touched it before he told her what it was! Then Noah didn't want anything to do with it!

This was Katie's pose in almost every single photo today. Not sure why....

They also had a room with transportation exhibits, with buggies, a replica of the Wright brothers airplane, a helicopter, and space rockets.

There was also a kid's section with all kinds of interactive displays but it was VERY crowded in there! We were telling ourselves that it really didn't seem that crowded for being free day, and when we got in that part we knew why! Everyone was in there! We didn't get to do the gemstone mining area or the fossil dig..the line to get in those classrooms was EXTREMELY long and not moving! We also didn't do the planetarium. I guess we will have to go again when it isn't free day to do the rest.
UPDATE: I have since heard from a friend who works at the museum that they had 3700 visitors yesterday!!!! She said a typical Saturday runs 900 and a busy day around 1100.
WOW! The great thing is...she invited us to come another day as her guests!!! Yay!

Here is a picture of when we were leaving. Corey had gone to get the car and drive it up because it was POURING rain! But, there was nowhere near the door to park at all, so he just parked in the parking lot this time and brought umbrellas. The umbrellas did NO good though, because it was pouring so hard that they ground was just puddled up with water and our pants and shoes got soaked through! The rain was pouring off the edge of the umbrellas and soaking our sleeves. The parking lot was flooding too and it was just miserable trying to get out! Ugh!
It was a fun visit though...a true value! I am so glad I checked on facebook this morning to see my friends were going so we knew about it.