Morning at the Museum

Well, Thursday was the much anticipated day at our house. On Thursday, the whole family visited the Science Museum to become part of the Star Wars world.

Number One Son was so ready to go, he asked if we could change our tickets to Wednesday instead. But he made it to Thursday. Sweet Pea was also bouncing off the walls to see Yoda and R2D2. Lady Di fixed SP's hair in a fashion appropriate to the occasion.

It looks like even Yoda was impressed. Lady Di's enthusiasm for Star Wars was somewhere between 'I hope we don't have to stay long' and 'Do we really have to go?'. Needless to say, she isn't quite as big of a fan as the kids and I. In fact, she often gets Chewbacca confused with C3PO when the kids and I force her to watch one of the movies.

Our tickets said to arrive 1/2 hour early because of record attendance and long lines. Our tickets said nine o'clock, so we got up early and had great intentions to be there by eight-thirty. We got there at eight-fifty and were pretty much the only ones there. I guess the museum opens its doors at eight-thirty. Sometimes being nerdy does pay off.

At nine AM we were the first to enter the actual Star Wars exhibit. But just before we went in, we had a pre-emptive bathroom visit. That made us the sixth or seventh ones in the exhibit.

N1S really enjoyed seeing the model space ships and reading the interesting facts about the making of Star Wars. We were both disappointed to find out there was no 'live light saber' demonstration. Sweet Pea liked getting her picture taken in front of all of the Wookie costumes.

We got to see an animatronic show in the robot theatre. Various robots on the stage would move and talk in time to the lesson about modern day robotics. The theatre sat about fifteen people. On the bench behind us, a grampa pointed out R2D2 on the stage to his granddaughter. SP turned around and piped up very lecturely, "That's not R2D2. That's R4!"

It was one of my proudest moments as a Dad.

Each kid also got their picture taken and inserted into a Star Wars scene of their choosing. SP wanted to be either Princess Leia or Darth Vader. N1S had a more difficult decision. He couldn't decide between a dozen different pictures. One princess and one sith lord isn't too bad.

The climax of the day was tickets to the IMAX theatre to see a documentary about special effects in the movies. Three-fourths of our family loved it and learned a lot about special effects. One-fourth of our family got an $8 nap.