Last summer, the girls and I took a day-trip to Phoenix to play; it was a lot of fun and I thought it would be a good idea to repeat the trip. Heck, maybe we will make a tradition out of it...we'll do at least one "fun" day in Phoenix every summer! However, this year, I didn't want to just repeat everything we'd done last year...there are a lot of cool things to do in Phoenix, and I wanted to branch out a bit. The only catch was that our bank account was feeling a little slim due to our June trip to UT, as well as various annoying vehicle repairs and other necessary expenses that have cropped up this summer. It was time, I thought, to have fun while being thrifty.
For example, I decided to take the kids someplace where we already had a membership card that would let us in for free--the Arizona Science Center! True, we had visited it once recently (I did feel a bit guilty about revisiting so soon), but truthfully, it is an awesome museum for kids, and the girls were all overjoyed to be returning again. We last saw the Science Center during our Phoenix over-nighter last December, but there were already some new exhibits up for the kids to discover, as well as some favorites from our last trip they were excited to revisit.
It looked a little different from the last time we saw it...this hill outside the Science Center was covered with snow when we visited last December! Now it's just your typical grassy knoll.
Here are some of the highlights from our return to the Science Center:
It was fun to shoot balls into the air with water spouts...
...so Aurora spent a great deal of time getting everything in just the right position!
A new exhibit taught kids about everything involved in building a house, from the differences in shower wall composition...
...to the intricacies of plumbing...
...to the agony of interior decorating.
Lorelai & Aurora enjoyed using these wooden slats to build their own houses.
In the "human body" section of the museum, Aurora loved going down the massive stomach slide...complete with gross burping sound effects!
Watching the suspended bicycle rider as she made her way over the first floor of the museum
Celeste was everywhere, including on a bed of nails...
...and spinning on a centrifugal force pole.
Aurora likes to imitate her big sister...
...in all things.
Here's the "intense weather simulation" platform, in which visitors are treated to gusty winds, earthquakes, rainfall, and intense heat. Lorelai is a little scared of this exhibit, so she only stood in the "danger zone" when the program was turned off.
She much preferred to study rocks...
...while Celeste & Aurora got rained on.
Here's the "volcano" portion of the simulator; intense heat & a shaking floor! Whee!
The girls all love to pose in front of Planet Earth
This was a special screen the girls could stand behind, then watch as digital colored "rain" fell on their shadows. Pretty cool.
I am not sure when we'll return to the Science Center again. I'd like to take a break from it for a little while, so it doesn't get stale. Also, our membership to Kitt Peak National Observatory (which, coincidentally also gives us free entry to the Science Center) will be expiring by the end of the year. However, we've gotten so many benefits from this membership that we will likely be renewing it soon, one way or another. We are a family of museum nerds, and there's no way we will pass up free entry to such an awesome place!
Playing amidst all the science, however, made us pretty hungry. I decided to drive a mile or so through downtown Phoenix to a famous restaurant I'd never visited before...The Old Spaghetti Factory. I figured the kids would love the carb boost after all their running around...
...and did they ever! They loved just about everything at the restaurant: the fact we got to sit inside an "actual" trolley car, which sat smack-dab inside the dining area; the warm buttered bread; the tasty spaghetti with its huge meatball accompaniment! All that, and the kids got spumoni ice cream for dessert at the end!
From an interior decoration and nutritional perspective, The Old Spaghetti Factory is firmly stuck in the 1980s. It felt like I'd gone back in time to an earlier time, with dark, lacquered, overly decorated walls looming over me as I ate. There wasn't even a Wi-Fi connection in the place, either...it was a pre-Internet kind of lunch! As I munched on my noodles, I mused that the low-carb/healthy carb crowd would probably have a conniption fit if they were forced to eat here. The way I see it, stuffing your face with delicious hot spaghetti is not a crime, so long as you don't do it all the time.
Now that our bellies were full and our energy restored, I decided to take the kids to an indoor playground that some of my friends had told me about, but we'd never visited ourselves. Makutu's Island is located just off the freeway in Chandler, on our way out of town. The location was perfect for a quick getaway to home after our visit. Another reason I chose Makutu's Island was that we could get in for half-price because it was our first trip there! This was great news on account of that "slim bank account thing" I mentioned earlier.
As it turned out, Makutu's Island may be something worth paying full price for in the future. It was inevitable that we compare it to Pump It Up, the indoor inflatable playground in Tucson that's also popular with my girls. Makutu's Island has a smaller play area than Pump It Up, and like Pump It Up, it has a faint whiff of sweaty gym socks...but that's probably inevitable in a place like this. However, I thought Makutu's Island was a nicely decorated, very creative play area, and it was the perfect level of "little daredevil" for my kids.
The girls crawled through tunnels and artificial "grottoes"; slid down metal poles; walked across creaky wooden bridges twenty feet off the ground (don't worry, there are protective nets beneath!); climbed ladders, stairs, ropes, and artificial "trees"; and dove down some pretty tall, steep, twisty slides...
It was all very exciting!
Aurora was a little nervous about the whole thing the first time through; she made me follow her everywhere through the play area. Bad idea! It was a play area designed for kids and young teens; there were many places that adults could barely fit inside. I managed to navigate through most of the play area with Aurora, but only with great difficulty. I bruised my hips & arms several times, and I twisted my ankle so badly it was sore the entire next day. I did see a few other adults crouched inside various secions of the play area; as I doggedly crawled past them, I saw they had the same expression on their faces as on mine...long-suffering patience.
Mostly, I was content to sit at the foot of the giant "tree" playground that filled the center of the room, reading my book and listening to the progress of my happy girls as they passed by beside, around, and over me. We ended up staying for more than two hours, with no real breaks; the girls went at full speed the whole time! In fact, Celeste and Aurora burst into tears on the way out, because they were so sad to leave. That probably means we'll have to take them back someday!
Lorelai took this shot from our car...not bad!
It was past six o'clock in the evening when we finally emerged from Makutu's Island (into the hot hot Phoenix night air...ick!). However, I'd brought enough snacks in the cooler to keep our kids fed so we could go straight home without stopping for dinner. The ride home was uneventful and quiet, since the girls all started snoozing in their seats. It had been a very fun day, and we were all tired, full, and happy. It may have been our last "official" Family Fun Friday of the summer (since we ended up having a bunch of commitments on the following Fridays), but at least we went out with a bang! I wonder what we'll do in Phoenix next summer?
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