Pretend City

Today the kids and I met a friend from college days (she lives in LA) and her two boys at the new Pretend City Children's Museum in Irvine, Calif. It's about halfway between our homes and neither of us had been so it made for a great day outing. The kids all had so much fun! The museum is entirely indoors and essentially an entire city, only "child-sized". I was expecting it to be like the children's museum in Portland, but was pleasantly surprised to find the layout and activities much better. We were there for 4 hours and still didn't do it all. So fun -- both to experience this new museum and to see an old friend.

Thomas' favorites: the postal office (all parts - collecting sent mail, stamping, sorting, mailing), dressing up and dancing on the theater/stage, working the theater stage lights and audio, cooking up food in the Thai restaurant kitchen, shopping at the grocery store, working dispatch at the firestation and playing doctor at the health clinic. Whew! Needless to say, he had a fantastic time! He now says he wants to be a mailman (it was a Paleontologist last week). When he was checking out Meredith I asked him what he heard using the stethoscope and his response was "I can hear the food in Meredith's tummy dancing around to music."

Meredith's favorites: the little cars she could drive, stamping her "employee timecard", using the ATM to get cash, and painting in the Art Studio.

Get the feeling we had a great time? Yes, we did and we'll be going again at the end of the month!