First weekend of Summer!

It's the first weekend of summer and do we sleep in and lazily spend some hours at the pool??? No WAY! We head to Pittsburgh.

Saturday morning we headed to the Carnegie Science Center. What an incredible museum! This is far and away better than the Philly Please Touch Museum. More interactive, more exhibits that actually work, and so much cleaner. Normally we estimate the kids will last about 2 to 3 hours in a place like this, but when we hit about 4.5 hours and needed to go check into the hotel -- no one was ready to leave. I highly recommend this place for anyone of any age!!

Here the kids are touring the US Requiem. It's a submarine/exhibit. Personally I liked all the welded steel ash trays in every nook in every room. Really??? Diesel fumes and smoking. Was that a good idea? Although if I was trapped under the sea for months at a time, I would no doubt smoke like a chimney.

The robot exhibit was another big favorite. The kids were overjoyed to see R2D2.

Then we headed to PNC Park to see the Pirates defeat the Mets. It was a perfect, clear, mild summer night at the ball park.

The view from our seats was fantastic!! Almost postcard-worthy.

Typical for CJ at a sporting event, she got her picture with the Parrot within 10 minutes of our arrival. How does she do it???

The game was exciting and quick, but nothing can compare to the excitement the kids got from the cotton candy!

Here we are waiting for the post-game fireworks and Huey Lewis concert. HILARIOUS!

While they were setting up the stage the crowd was standing and cheering. CJ loved it!! She joined right in and screamed her heart out. Fast forward to her teenage years... I am afraid. Very afraid.

The fireworks were amazing. They were shooting off from on the field, from the back of the stadium, from a boat in the river, on the bridge over the river and off of the top of one of the skyscrapers downtown. I love fireworks, so this was my favorite part. It went on forever!!!

Here's Huey. Damn. He is old.

After going to bed at 11pm and up by 7:30am, we downed some breakfast a local diner and were off to the zoo. This zoo is far superior to the National Zoo in so many different regards. Go here.

This is CJ with $8,000 worth of ivory. The zoo keeper was so trusting. Sucker.

Here is our happy family with Victoria the Elephant. We got to pet her ear, truck and body. This was so very cool. I wasn't expecting how hairy she would be on her trunk. But there were long, hard hairs all over her. This was just so cool.

My monkeys hanging out with one of their kind.

The shark tank was Alex's #1 must see. Since they were at the very end, he waited quite a long time. He was psyched when we got there!



No!!! Don't pet it!!!

One of the more exciting exhibit for us that day was the sea lion tank. Since they are playful animals by nature, we were tickled that the animals were so engaging. Check out this video to see what I mean.