Christmas Season Trip to KCDC

Julie, Andrew, Joanna, and Kirk went in on a joint gift for our family this year to get us a membership to the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center in Topeka.  We’ve been there a few times and really like it.  There’s a lot to do indoors and outdoors.  I wasted no time in taking advantage of this gift that we received yesterday by taking the kids today, giving Meghan a chance to relax after an exhausting holiday season.

A place I hadn't explored with the kids before was the vet clinic.  Joshua immediately sat behind the desk and picked up the phone to make some important calls.

Joshua told me I could be his assistant, and he handed me the clipboard.  He said, "You're the one who talks to people, and I'm the one who works on the laptop."  So I guess I'm relegated to greeting people as they come into our clinic, while he does the important stuff.  He's the boss, and I'm the assistant, so it makes sense.

He apparently also hired Hannah as an x-ray technician, as she went to work on checking out this giraffe's x-ray.  Yes, we're a specialty vet clinic that not only handles cats and dogs, but also African animals.

The plasma ball is a new addition, as it wasn't there last time I was here.  These things are always fun to play with.

In the mechanic shop, Hannah decided she would lounge around while others did the work, but later she was intrigued and decided to get her hands dirty by refilling the antifreeze.

There was a traveling exhibit which focused on China.  I found it quite interesting, as there were plaques everywhere with interesting information.  For example, in China baby clothes have a slit in the back, because babies get potty trained much earlier, so they need to be able to still wear their onesie while sitting on the potty.  They had a setup of different rooms in a typical Chinese house, including this living room that was showing The Monkey King, a popular cartoon there.  The kids did not care what language it was in, as they saw a nice couch and a cartoon on TV and plopped right down to watch.  There was a lot of info on pandas, and there was this crib with stuffed pandas in it that you could pretend to feed milk, but Hannah for some reason took that as an invitation to climb in the crib with them, though I stopped her before she could join them.

We finished with the grain-moving structure and the coin well, which they always love.

I stayed a little longer than I should have, and the kids were overtired when we left. They were all indignant at being forced to leave, and Joshua was so tired that he ended up bursting into tears because he wanted to stay so bad.  I did need to stop at Walmart to get a few things on the way home, and they had cheered up by then and were excited to go shopping with me.  It was a full day of fun with Daddy and the three kids.