Please Touch Museum Philadelphia

This past weekend, Kristin and pretty much all the ladies at church went on a Ladies Retreat to a camp that our Church sponsors 30-40 miles west of Philadelphia called Camp Manatawny. It was a good time for the ladies, half of which are pregnant it seems, to get together and spend a few days studying God's word. I am sure there was lots of "talking" and "conversing" and "gabbing" and "some more talking"...which is wonderful.

All of the abandoned husbands decided to have a Man's Night on Friday, and nothing says Man's Night like grilling red meat...oh, and all the kids were there too, but they were too busy destroying the Clark's house and playing the popular game of "who can hold the most toys while trying to take everyone else's." Very popular these days with the 2 year olds. We had to break up a few skirmishes, but nothing serious. I didn't have my camera with me, as it wasn't on my list of things to bring for "Man's Night."

The next day was the grand opening of the new location for the Please Touch Museum of Philadelphia. The museum was previously located in downtown Philadelphia, in part of an old building with no parking. It was difficult to get to, small, and outdated. I guess they stopped putting money into it a few years ago when they started working on the new location. I say "new location" and not "new building" because the building that they moved into is this, Memorial Hall:



Memorial Hall was originally built to be the Art Gallery of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition and first home to the renowned Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Art Museum has since moved towards downtown Philadelphia (think the movie Rocky). Memorial Hall has 38,000 square feet of new exhibits dedicated to kids 7 and under.

I said that it was the Grand Opening, but it was actually the first time that the public was allowed in, and only for members who had RSVPed for the event. Knowing that Kristin was going to be out-of-town, I thought this would be a perfect time to go. Since our membership allowed for 2 kids and 2 adults, I invited Chris and Annie to come with us. Natalie and Annie were in heaven for almost 3 hours. We could have spent all day there...actually, we could have spent all day in only a portion of the museum. The place was HUGE!

Here is a picture of Annie and Natalie walking into the building:



Like any good parent would do, we let them go to the water exhibit first, so that they could be wet for the rest of the trip. It wasn't until they were wet that we realized they have aprons for the kids to wear. None of the other kids were wearing them, so it wasn't just our kids that were wet.



The next section was dedicated to pond animals. Natalie really enjoyed jumping from lilly pad to lilly pad as it made noise with each jump.



She stopped to take a picture with a swan, although she kept insisting that it was a "goose."



One of Natalie's favorite section of the museum was the "Philadelphia Hospital." Natalie quickly grabbed a baby from the nursery, and took it over to the exam table, along with a doctors kit. Well, actually, before she could get a doctors kit, she tried to take a few instruments from another kids bag.



She checked the baby's ears:



She even gave the baby a shot, "gently":



While Natalie was playing in the Alice and Wonderland section, a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer took a picture of Natalie having a tea party with Mr. Rabbit. He took her name down and where we were from. He said that they would be running a special section on the museum in next Sunday's paper (10/12). We do get the paper, and will keep an eye out for the report. If she makes it into the paper, I will post it on the blog, but I am sure that he took numerous pictures, so I am not getting my hopes up.

We finished up our trip with a few rides on the carousel. The second time around I went to go and put her on a donkey/goat/etc. and she looked at me and said, "no daddy, I ride horsey." OOOOkkay then. We found a horse, and all was well with the world again.





Overall, we had a blast, and I would gladly go again. To see the rest of the pictures I took on the trip, please see here:
All pictures

p.s. I had to take my camera to the Best Buy doctor to get fixed, and they won't have it back to me for 2-4 weeks. I broke it on our trip to Iowa in September, but have been making due. Most pictures are too bright, so I think that a sensor is broken. I was hoping that they would just replace it, but I wasn't that lucky. I have a back-up camera, thanks to Kristin's sister Mara.