Phoenix Children's Museum

Our first morning there Grams hadn't arrived yet so the kids and I ran off to the Children's museum while Taylor and his dad went to golf.  This museum is now my absolute favorite- and that's saying a lot since we've been to more than 10 Children's museums around the country.  It was amazing.  First you walk into this giant room and one entire wall is this air-pipe-scarf contraption.  First you put 1 or more scarves into one of the shoots.  It zooms around the pipes, pushed by air, 

and then shoots out of holes at the top of the wall.

And then of course there's running and jumping and giggling and laughing and catching and running back to do it again and again.

Look at this giant toy.  We spent our first 45 minutes there and still I had to drag my boys away.

The rest of the room is filled with this 3 story tall climbing structure.  Up, down, in, around- luckily there's only an entrance/exit on the bottom since I lost sight of my boys almost instantly.

And just in case my kids hadn't gotten enough of the air tube toy, when we arrived on the second floor the first toy we found was another air tube machine- except this one had fluffy balls shooting around inside it.

Which were great fun to block with your head (if you're as silly as Isaac) and have hit you in the face.

And which were even more fun to try to catch.

So many new toys to try out.  Plinko anyone?

Isla was a good sport as always and entertained herself by watching others and playing with her stroller toys.

I thought this museum was great- even the bathrooms were well thought out- sinks at every height you'd need.  How come no one else ever thought of that?

Ethan loved this "car wash" area.  He loved riding around and giving his brothers rides.

They could have stayed here all day.

One of the reasons I'll rave about this museum to everyone I see are the baby areas.  Most of the other museums I've been to have a dedicated baby/crawler area but it's just one room and totally separate from the rest of the rooms which doesn't work when I'm supervising 4 kids by myself.  This museum though has walled off little baby areas in almost all the rooms so I could just set Isla down in the baby area and know she couldn't get out and no one big would be in there with her.  Plus no one with shoes was walking around so she wasn't picking up crazy germs either.  Such a simple idea and so nice to have so I could play with my boys and not worry about Isla.

This is the fort room.  Never seen this before.  All over the room there are hooks and blocks and blankets with loops and clips so the kids can build forts.

Ethan was not interested so he kept riding the trikes through the car wash while Isaac and Miles built their masterpiece.  Again they could have happily stayed there all day.

Alas, we were off to the art section.  Light tables with sand.

And then the boys got to paint a space ship.

We saw lots of these sculpture toys around the museum that looked similarly painted by kids.  It's fun to think a little bit of my kids got left behind (unless some other kid paints over their little globs :)

This tiny toy might have gotten overlooked but it turned out to be Ethan's favorite.  You stick a stuffed animal onto a velcro strip and then use the pulley to raise him up.

When the stuffed animal gets to the top the eagle's wings spin like a fan and shoot it across the room.  Ethan thought this was hilarious and wanted to do it again and again and again.

Then we were off to the grocery store.

And the diner next to it which was a hit.  Ethan loved making me food and being a waiter.

Miles wasn't thrilled with cooking so he moved on to the attached room with so many of these ball drop things.

Isaac stayed to cook pizzas for me.  The night before we'd eaten dinner at Grimaldi's pizza and we got to watch them throwing dough, adding toppings, and then putting the pizzas in and pulling them out.  So cute that they got to do the same the next day.

And of course Isla had her own little baby area to play in and I had a perfect cushion to rest on while the boys brought me food and she rolled around.

The night before Ethan ordered a plain cheese pizza and when it came and had a piece of basil as garnish on top he had a bit of a freak out moment.  We explained it was just a decoration but as a parent you never really know if they're listening or not.  So it was SO funny when he brought me over his play food plate and explained to me that the green on the side was "just a decoration" and I didn't have to eat it.  Nice to know he's listening- at least some of the time.

He also enjoyed tossing the pizza dough.

And helping Isaac bake the pizzas.

And then we moved on to the race car track.  Not enough pictures to do it justice but it was great.  My last complement for this museum is that they had nice Adirondack chairs by almost every exhibit so that the parents could rest while the kids played.  I didn't once have to leave my boys alone to go feed Isla or make them play in an area they didn't want to so that I could give her a break from the stroller.

And in case we hadn't already had enough fun, there was a giant room of these hanging pool noodles to run through.  Just weird and lots of fun.