Fun House at The Building Museum

 Today we visited the National Building Museum to see the annual summer exhibit. This year it was called Fun House and it was an entire house built of styrofoam and other white materials. It was pretty cool - just as it is every year. The kids were happy about the return of the giant ball pit!!

'Hives' at the National Building Museum

We have gone to the summer exhibition at the National Building Museum each year since we moved here.  It's a tradition that the kids look forward to since it changes every summer and it's always something interesting.  This year the exhibition is called "Hives" and it is structures made of thick cardboard tubes. They are painted silver on the outside and a color on the inside so they look shiny from the outside until you walk inside and the color really takes over.  The lighting is well done and there is a sound element to it as well.
The kids enjoyed building their own structures out of cardboard and we visited some of the other exhibits before getting a snack - cookies of course.  We even managed to snag street parking this time around! I've never been able to park on the street in that area - it's so crowded and we usually just end up in the garage.
The kids enjoyed themselves but it wasn't as entertaining as the Icebergs last year or certainly the Beach the year before that!  But really - what can top a million balls in a ball pit???  We are looking forward to seeing what they do next summer!!
Remember - this is a Blue Star Museum! If you are a military family, your admission is extremely discounted for this exhibit and is free during the rest of the year!

Icebergs at the National Building Museum

 We visited the Summer exhibit at the National Building Museum today.  It's become a yearly tradition and we've been every summer since we moved here - it's only our third summer but in Army life - that's a tradition!  We visited the big Maze two years ago and the ball pit Beach last summer.

This was very different from either of the other two exhibits.  As you walk into the icebergs, you truly feel immersed.  Everything is blue, quiet and cool - an extreme difference from 100 degree loud city outside.  We arrived just at the right time - around 1:30.  There were very few people in the museum and we even managed to find street parking only about a block away.  (We are two for two in the past two visits into the district.  I anticipate never being able to find a parking spot again.) The kids immediately raced off into the sea of icebergs and found that you could climb all the way to the top of one and look down into the blue sea beneath.  It was surreal to feel like you were underwater looking up!  I climbed up to the top and joined them - it was an incredible landscape above the "water".  We quickly realized that there were slides out of the iceberg that landed you in an open area filled with large pillows.  The kids wasted no time piling them all up together and jumping into them.  I think that they weren't the first ones to do that, judging from the remnants of an exploded pillow on the floor!

After we had relaxed in the piles of pillows for a while, we climbed up two sets of stairs to the third floor to get a birds' eye view of the icebergs.  It was fascinating to see the exhibit from above.  It looked like a fishtank!  After we climbed back downstairs, we visited the kids' building area.  It's always a fun place to hang out for a while.  We had to finish our visit with cookies from the cafe and it was a good thing too!  We got caught in bad traffic for about an hour because of a huge accident.  Everyone would have been pretty hungry without a snack!!

All in all - a great day and totally worth the price of admission.  I love that we are so close to the city.  It's so easy to get in and out - usually! - and the kids and I love exploring!!