MOSI on...

Yesterday I went on a field trip with Ethan's class to Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry. It was fun to hang out with him for the day, especially in a place neither of us have ever been.

 This is the kind of place where if you had a membership and went back often, you'd get more out of it. As it was, the kids could only focus on one thing for about five seconds before running off to look at something else. 

 Now we know Ethan's teeth were clean, or else the black light wouldn't have worked on them ;-)

 These guys made me laugh because they had the opportunity to ride a bike on a tightrope strung across the third story, and also a chance to stick their hand into a mesh metal glove and then touch lightning, but none of them would do it. Little girls with ponytails would bounce up and do these things, and the boys still wouldn't. Even though I wished they would try it, I was also glad they weren't giving in to peer pressure -- if they weren't comfortable with it, good for them to say no.

 The boys nearly blew away in a hurricane. The wind in this room was pretty strong.

 And Ethan was brave enough to lay on a bed of nails. Yes, those really are pointy nails he's laying on.

 Poor Ethan lost his head along the way. But it looked good in a bowl of fruit, so I think we'll keep it.

As you can see on the sign, the wind in this tube got up to 79 mph. It looked painful.

 The part of the museum the boys didn't like at all was called "The Amazing You" exhibit. The first thing they saw when they walked up the stairs was a statue of a naked pregnant woman's body. All three of them were like, "Ummm...." and looked at me with trepidation about having to walk through an exhibit that started off like that.

One of my friends from church was also there on the field trip, and she said her son walked into a viewing room right as a baby was born. He came out stunned, and said, "I just saw something that no 11 year old should have to see."

The picture with the puppets was a strange game show that looked really cool, but actually was fairly crude and graphic about not getting pregnant in high school or not smoking. A nearby dad (who was with a little girl) looked at me with a raised eyebrow and shook his head about the jokes the puppets were telling. It really was weird.

And here's what Ethan will look like at age 45. He's not going to age well, apparently. I hope he doesn't get those aging-badly genes from me because that would mean this is what I'll look like at age 45, too.

We also got to watch a lovely IMAX movie about monarch butterfly migration, and a man who discovered where they went by tracking them with stickers on their wings. It was actually touching and made both Ethan and me tear up a little at the end (sniff sniff) when the man was on his death bed after working his entire life trying to follow the butterflies, discovered one of his tags all the way down in Mexico, in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, with millions of other butterflies.

So the moral of the field trip is, if we ever go to the MOSI again, we'll skip the body part (haha), and just do the tightrope bike or watch a movie, then enjoy the rest of the museum.