I woke up this morning refreshed and ready to do something fun. I knew that there was a children’s museum around Roanoke somewhere so I looked it up and found out that it was in Lynchburg, VA which is about an hour from Roanoke. We are always up by 7:00 am so I had plenty of time to get myself and three kids ready for the hour drive. We were out the door and on the road by 9:00 am with lunches packed, kids dressed and ipad charged.
We made it to Amazement Square by 10:15 am. I didn’t know anything about it and was amazed at how large it was. It was four stories high and had an endless number of rooms and exhibits. One of the coolest parts was that it had a Chicfila-like play area that was in the center of the place that was also four stories high. There was a zipline in the climbing thing that Faith did over and over again.
The kids favorite part was the farm area for kids under 5. There was corn to be picked, a hen house with eggs, a tractor, horses to sit on, an underground tunnel, and a cow that you could pull on the utters and water would come out. Faith and Wilson picked the corn over and over again and then would go milk the cow. Faith pretended that she was Princes Poppyseed from the Veggie Tales movie. Miller could even play safely in that area and began to take more than one step at a time. He can walk!! I kept trying to get it on video but I wasn’t quick enough.
There was an Egypt exhibit that had costumes for the kids to dress up in. There was even a fake mummy for them to learn about mummification. Here is Faith in her costume.
There was an exhibit on speed and velocity, a puppet stage, a recording studio with instruments and headphones, an exhibit on building things, one about health/organs/doctors, and a really cool water table that you could send a boat down, fill up the lock, and then send it the rest of the way. It even rained on the table.
Wilson also painted in the room that they let you paint on the walls and then they wash the walls half way through the day.
Believe it or not, we stayed in Amazement Square for over five hours. We didn’t leave until after 3:30pm. We were the only people there for a while and go personalized service from one of the workers. It was great! We finally got in the car, found a Starbucks, and drove back to Roanoke.
We had promised the older two that they could go swimming at the Y with Tom after work so I got their suits and dropped them off at the Y for a little while. They love going swimming with Tom. He is a fun dad. He teaches them how to swim and plays around with them. I am glad that he likes to do things like that. They had a blast!
Overall, it was a very fun and successful day. We did something new, spent some quality time together, and never once was there a problem between us. I loved it and so did they.