Discovery Museum Sleepover!

Gosh, we had quite the time last weekend.  We had TWO amazing activities planned.  This is the story of the first one....  

Friday night we started out with a Girl Scout Slumber Party at the Children's Discovery Museum.  They started out this excellent activity so that kids who live in rural areas could come to the Discovery Museum and stay for more than just a few hours.  We don't live in a rural area.  We actually could probably have walked to the Discovery Museum.  But we hopped right on board that train, cause it was a train headed for awesomeness.  

Last year, the girl's Girl Scout Troops decided to split into two groups.  The older girls going into 6th grade "bridged" up to the "Cadette" level.  Since they're so mature and grown up (see photo above), they broke off from the younger group to do mature, grown up things (see all other photos ever of Ella)(also see: sarcasm).  It's been a little hard having two troops at the same time.  Then we found out that the younger troop was not going to continue after this year.  And really, that's ok.  Especially what Gretchen inevitably does before every meeting:  OHMYGOSH, WHY do we HAVE to go to GIRL SCOUTS!  I HAAAAAATE GIRL SCOUTS!  I don't even want to BE a GIRL SCOUT!  Why do we have to do this?  Because you tell me to?  FINE.  It's like you don't even CARE about me!  UGHHHHH!!!!  (and that is why I didn't volunteer to be a Girl Scout Leader this year.)  Of course this is after I asked her if she wanted to continue with scouting (she'd said yes, for sure.  At the time), and when she found out that the troop was ending, she decided she was upset about it.  Until I told her we'd do other fun stuff.  Promise.  Come on, I love having fun.  Fun is my favorite!

So we're ending the troop, and we have a ton of blood-sweat-and-tears Girl Scout Cookie Money we need to spend in the next 2.5 months.  So we are GOING BIG.  Hence the fabulous sleepover at the Discovery Museum.  If you life in town & can get a group of 50 people together, YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DO THIS.  It was so great!  They provided all the food, they had staff on hand the whole night, they had a RIDICULOUS amount of activities!  It was so cool! 

The evening started off with the girls sewing fleece Monster Fish stuffed animals on sewing machines like a cool little crafting sweat shop of creativity.  That's what Ella is throwing in the above picture.  Then they had a game that taught stuff about habitats and fish (There's an excellent National Geographic Monster Fish exhibit there now, hence the theme....)  But I was tired, so I didn't pay attention or play.  Because I'm the worst.  Then they had a giant slingshot set up in the foyer.  See?  We may have accidentally knocked the cover off the security camera.  Sorryboutthat.

Then we dissected a real dead fish.  That really smelled.

And looked at all the fish guts.

And took pieces to an electronic microscope and projected them so we could all go "Oh GROSS" together.

And looked off in the distance while smiling and shrugging our shoulders (can you even believe we're doing this?  I know!)

And then disrespected ANOTHER fish corpse by covered it in black ink and making traditional fish prints or Gyotaku (Japanese 魚拓, from gyo "fish" + taku "rubbing") (so cool!)  (I don't know how to make Japanese characters, I totally copied and pasted that from my BFF, Wikipedia.  Thanks Wiki!)

Wait, there's still more nasty guts in there!

Is this a heart or a lung?

We got to pick any room in the museum to set up "camp", so we picked the "Camping" room downstairs.  There's a neat little cave down there, and a tent already set up, and fake stars in the sky.  I had anxiety dreams the whole time that kids were playing in the museum, but in my dream I kept thinking, "But I'm sooooooooo tired!  I'll get up in a minute!"  So I dreamed I was tired.  That sucks.  Also, can someone please invent a sleeping back that doesn't make a "whooshing" sound every time fidgety little legs move in their sleeping bags?  That'd be so awesome, thankssomuch.

Besides anxiety dreams about wild children and sleeping bag swoosh noises, it was a 100% GOOD TIME!  We are going to miss Girl Scouts.  But we're going to cram as much fun into this Spring as humanly possible.

Because Ella's troop is also ending.  They're all growing up and coming up with their own minds about what they want to do!  Sniff!!!!

END OF AN ERA!!!!!!

(OHMYGOSH, I'll have SO MUCH more free time!  I'm going to fill it up so fast, but I'm going to pretend that's not going to happen and that I'm really going to just sit in the hammock all weekend.)