Motor City

Last Friday we took a little road trip with the kids to Detroit to visit the Henry Ford museum. I'm not sure what I expected Detroit to be like, although I did think there was a very small chance we could run into Eminem (based on those Chrysler commercials), but it turns out that it kind of feels like every other biggish city.

I did find myself saying to Ben the same thing that I say every time we drive through Michigan and I see all the trees and the lakes: "I would be okay with you getting a call here."

The Henry Ford museum was really neat. Ben and I think it is one of those places that you can go to with young kids and have one experience and then go back to without any kids and have a totally different experience. It is a museum that appeals to a broad range of ages and that is the best kind of museum in my book.

 Connor really enjoyed the train exhibits that were open for Christmas. They had both a Lionel display and a Lego display. After looking at the trains we were able to do some playing in a train playing area.

 Sophia was less sure about playing in the train area. She liked the concept of playing on the train toys, but not really the execution of it. She wanted out, she wanted in, she wanted back out...you get the general idea.

The museum had a number of really neat exhibits. Other than the trains, we probably spent the most time looking at the airplanes. Connor really liked to pretend to fly them and he also thought it was really cool to read about the different types of planes they used to make. 

 The Rosa Parks bus was on display at the museum. We tried to explain to Connor the significance of what happened on the bus, but he seemed a little confused that there ever could have been a time where people didn't just sit where ever they wanted to on the bus. The idea that people were treated so differently based on their race seemed completely nonsensical to him.

 My favorite part of the whole museum was a 1941 house design that never took off. It was a two bedroom round house that didn't sit on the ground and was suspended in the air by cables. (I know what you are thinking...How do we not live in these now?) The best part to me was the advertising campaign about how great the house was. As you can see, I especially liked this advertisement.

Here is a picture of the house. It had such fancy things as a rotating closet to make getting to your items so much easier to get to. The amazing advancements in the house also included round corners in the bathroom, making cleaning a breeze! This is the only model that exists today.

 They also had a Wizard of Oz exhibit that was very hands on and the kids could play different areas. By the time I snapped this photo, the little ones were pretty exhausted. Also, they were pretty much over me taking pictures of them.

 Lastly, we visited the section of the museum that had the thing that Connor had been looking forward to the whole trip. That's right, the highlight of the trip for Connor was the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile. I have to admit, a giant traveling hot dog is pretty cool.

It was a great trip and we all had a wonderful time. The highlight for me was stopping on the way home at IKEA to get some goodies. This was probably the low spot for my wallet, but we grabbed some pretty cool things. We also kept telling ourselves that we may move to a part of the country this summer where an IKEA is much further than just a couple of hours. The horror.