Tacoma Children's Museum

After visiting the Museum of Glass in Tacoma we walked around more of downtown Tacoma and we ended up at the Children's Museum.  We spent over an hour there, only leaving when we needed lunch, and Alden had so much fun!  It was neat to watch Alden play with Daddy and show him different things that he figured out.  This was a really fun and free outing!

Alden loved these water play areas.  He wasn't too sure about the smock at first but eventually put it on.

Alden loved moving all the rubber duckies around and collecting them in one area.

This was a cool thing where Alden could write on the walls with light up pens. The image actually appeared on the walls but I couldn't get it to show up in the pictures.

Alden LOVED this.  He would have Daddy put the scarves in the tubes and then watch them and try to find them when they got blown out of another end of the tube.  Here is a short little video of it.

Alden had fun playing on this play structure and figuring out how everything worked and moved.

Alden ended up back at the water area before we left.  He just loved playing there, which is interesting because he still is not very fond of pools and baths.  At least he doesn't hate all water. =)

We had a great adventure and it was fun watching Alden discover things and watching him play with Daddy!

Tacoma Museum of Glass

We went and visited the Museum of Glass in Tacoma a couple weeks ago.  Right now it is free for active duty military, so it was a fun and cheap outing for our family. They had a auditorium room were they were blowing glass and you could watch and ask questions.  It was really fun to watch the process and see the progression of glass blowing.  Drew was very surprised that most people working with the glass and furnaces were only wearing T-shirts and shorts and the only protective gear they wore was safety glasses.  However, maybe blowing glass isn't as dangerous as it seems...I don't know.  It was still fun to watch and no one got hurt while we were there so that was good.

After watching them blow glass for as long as Alden let us, we started walking around the exhibits and seeing the artwork on display there.  There were some really neat things to see there!  Below you can see some pictures of some of our favorite pieces of artwork.

Alden had fun watching for awhile.  He liked seeing the fire.

Here you can see the piece of glass they were blowing and then them sticking it back in the furnace.

Here the guy was using a hand torch to blow on specific sides of the glass.

I didn't get a very good picture of the final product but it was like they blew up a bubble of glass (like what you saw above) and then pushed it onto a mold that looked like bubbles so it looked like the little bubbles were inside a big one.

I thought this was cool that they had a row of items made of glass that were originally designed by children.

These were really neat, seeing an image in what seemed to be a rain drop.

Alden and Daddy had fun looking at the glass swords.

This was Drew and my favorite piece of artwork at the exhibit.

They had lots of different styles of glass work that were fun to see.

This was a fun exhibit that actually had pieces you could touch.  They had all these letters (like the one Alden is holding) that you could hold and carry around for awhile.  Alden thought that was cool.

The picture on the right here shows the exhibit I thought looked like balloons on a wall that you are supposed to throw darts at.

These were really cool to see in person.  I feel like the pictures do not do them justice but they were really neat!

Up on the top floor of the museum you had this view of Tacoma and then you could walk through the "Bridge of Glass" which you will see pictures of next.

If you looked up under the bridge you could see these beautiful glass shells!













We had a good time walking around the museum of glass and after going there we walked around more of Tacoma which was also interesting.