oh, what do you do in the wintertime. . .

. . .when all the world is white? (Did you hear that stat about every state but Hawaii getting snow on Friday?)

Patrick shocked me a few weeks ago when he told me that he was actually going to take the Friday through Monday off of work for the President’s Day weekend.  Those of you who know Patrick’s schedule know that we are rarely able to go on trips because of the unpredictability of his schedule (we’ve even had to cancel trips or go without him).  So the question was, where could we go that was close enough to Charlotte so we wouldn’t be wasting a ton of time in the car and would also have some fun things to do?  Just about two and a half hours from Charlotte is the Raleigh/Durham area and it met our criteria—not too far away, has some great museums we’d heard about, and since we had never been there, we thought it would be the perfect place to check out.

I was a little afraid that Kendall would be upset about missing her Valentine party at school on Friday, but she was so excited about our trip that she didn’t even mind.  We left Friday morning to head out on our excursion.  On our way there, we realized we’d be arriving in Raleigh just in time for an early lunch before we headed to the Marbles Kids Museum.  I pulled out my Blackberry and did a search for vegetarian restaurants in Raleigh.  The first one that came up was this little gem:

And the miracle was that it was less than a block away from the museum!  I checked out their online menu and knew immediately that this would be a winner.  In addition to plenty of options for the meat-loving crowd, there was an entire page of vegetarian/vegan selections—an extremely rare find!

 

When we were all thoroughly stuffed with freshly made hummus, pico de gallo, paninis, reubens, and veggie dogs, we walked the couple hundred yards down to the museum.  We stayed there for the next FOUR HOURS and there was never a moment of boredom.

“Mom, how do you play chest?”

If being the “check-out girl” was the only thing Berkeley got to do at this museum, it would have been worth it for her!  We had to tear her away, promising that there were lots more fun things she hadn’t seen yet!

Emery was a stellar ambulance driver.

“Yep, this bone is definitely broken, Mom.”

We all live in a yellow submarine. . .

     

Emery wanted to work at the pizzeria with all the big kids.

My own little fruit of the loom!

If you have kids and you ever find yourself in Raleigh NC, you have GOT to put this museum on your list!  I’ve told some friends in Charlotte about it and they already want to plan a trip up there!

Stay tuned for Day Two. . .