San Diego Air and Space Museum

When we were in San Diego we spent quite a few days at the museums in Balboa Park. We actually bought a pass to all of them. The first one we went to was the Air and Space Museum, of course. Really is there any other museum my boys want to see first.

The best part of the museum was the special exhibit from NASA. It was pretty awesome.
This is a moon rover tire. It's made out of some kind of metal, it was kind of cool. The tire is about 4 1/2 feet tall.
There were lots of interactive simulations. They had to pack the shuttle, or set-up colonies, etc.

This is an exercise machine on the shuttles. You pedal the bike as it spins. Basically it counteracts the effects of zero gravity on your body.
More simulations

The girls loved this infrared display. They went straight from posing to dancing!



Just a funny model hanging from the ceiling.
Checking out the inside of the shuttle. Here's the dining room.
Sleeping bunk

Even I had to get in on that action.
After, the special NASA exhibit we hit the regular museum. There were tons of models. Which got Darin very excited about being able to keep all of the models he builds.
We had to get a picture of Nathan with the Red Baron! He played snoopy in a Christmas play last year.
The girls wanted in on the picture taking so they chose a few displays they liked.

Model of the Hindenburg. It's like 6 feet long, which is about 1/24 scale. Darin started really dreaming that he would be able to buy a model plane this big and build it. I don't see any chance of it surviving his siblings help:-)
Then we reached the really awesome displays.


And finished it off with the kids playing simulators.




Sadly, huge model planes were not in the children's souvenir budget, but twisty helicopter flyers were. They had fun with these the whole two weeks we were in San Diego. Ready, Set,...
Launch!

We went back to the hotel, swam a bunch. And while we waited for our room service the girls crashed. It was way too cute. They did that alot on our vacation, they probably only ate dinner half the time.
Ginger squeezed herself into this cozy little corner.