Of the four children’s museums we’ve visited, Amanda and I have established the following order of preference: (1) Brookings, (2) Rockford, (3) Iowa City, and (4) Omaha. Given its top ranking, we were excited to introduce Emmie to the Children’s Museum of South Dakota along with Noah’s return after a three-year absence.
Amanda, Noah and Emmie pose in front of the Children’s Museum sign.
Flashback: Amanda and Noah posed for a similar photo in August 2011.
Josh and the girls in front of the museum sign.
The museum is housed in a 1936 elementary school, beautifully renovated for use as a children’s museum between 2008 and 2010. The four-year-old facility features a number of rooms, but we spent the majority of our time in the huge indoor prairie area, which had activities ranging from home construction to garden planting to cow milking. Adjacent to the large prairie area were rooms dedicated to basic city buildings like a post office, cafe, library, and grocery store.
Noah showcases his cart, featuring everything from green peppers to cheese to pasta.
Rory was proud of her cart, filled with food essentials plus fresh flowers.
Ella went shopping with a basket, posing in front of the vegetable section.
Emmie enjoyed harvesting potatoes and carrots from the garden.
Noah and Ella struck a pose in their postal service outfits.
Hard hats were necessary for the home construction project engineered by Josh and Amanda.
Emmie wasn’t sure what to make of her time on the saddle.
Emmie loved making noise with the symbols and drums in the “Sounds Abound” exhibit.
After thorough exploration of the indoor exhibits, we headed to the museum’s 1.5 acre outdoor campus. While the kids would have loved the large sand areas, we skipped those in favor of a look at the dinosaur exhibit, which features a full-size, “animatronic” T-Rex model. Its roars definitely caught the Lamers girls by surprise, as they ran toward their parents with uniform screams.
The dinosaur, Rory, Emery, and Ella.
Amanda let Emmie get a feel for the water, another outdoor activity we generally avoided.
Joshed helped Emery navigate across the stream.
We took the two-block walk from the museum to South Dakota’s best hamburger shop, Nick’s, in downtown Brookings. The indoor seating was full, so Josh and I each placed orders and we enjoyed the perfectly-cooked, slider-sized hamburgers at outdoor, tent-covered picnic tables. The seating arrangement worked well for our large group and we collectively consumed a dozen hamburgers before returning to the car and hitting the road to Le Mars.
Noah happily eating his cheeseburger from Nick’s in Brookings.
I was on my third hamburger by the time this photo was taken.
Natalie and Ella returning to the car.
Emmie enjoyed a moment of freedom running down the sidewalk in downtown Brookings.
We took a few pit-stops before reuniting with the Lamers in Le Mars, the Ice Cream Capital of the World and home to the Blue Bunny corporate headquarters. A jaunt into Sioux Falls meant a stop at Poppy’s Popcorn where we picked up a few popcorn balls. Our stop in Hawarden netted a few of our favorite frozen hashbrown casseroles from Central Catering. The Lamers made just a single stop at the Sioux Falls Target to buy their copy of Ticket to Ride: Europe, which was on the agenda for later in the evening.
Our clan, plus Rory, outside the Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor.
Ella, Rory, and Noah inside the Blue Bunny parlor.
Emmie and I split a scoop of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream topped with OREOs and marshmallow and chocolate sauces. Noah ate some orange sorbet. Amanda was the only one in our group not partaking in dessert, so she had the opportunity to feed and change Sadie while everyone else enjoyed ice cream.
Our four-plus hours of driving culminated with our happy arrival in Yankton, where we planned to stay two nights with Josh, Natalie, and family. While the kids played, I was excited to check out Yankton’s new Domino’s, which featured a “pizza showcase” design, opening up the kitchen to customers to watch their pizza being made, cooked, and boxed while waiting. Likely fueled by its newness and Riverboat Days parties, the Domino’s was packed but ridiculously efficient.
The new Yankton Domino’s had an impressive operation and equally solid (chain) pizza.
Back-to-back busy days helped the kids go to bed pretty smoothly, allowing Josh, Natalie, Amanda and I to transition to game mode. We started with a rousing game of Ticket to Ride: Europe, where I edged Amanda following my completion of four destination cards, the longest train route, and the valuable 8-train route from Stockholm, Sweeden to St. Petersburg, Russia.
Gears shifted to word games, as we rifled through numerous rounds of the wildly entertaining iPhone Heads Up game, where Josh and Natalie bested Amanda and I in the battle of the spouses before Natalie and I teamed up to defeat Josh and Amanda in the battle of non-OTs versus OTs. The “Act it Out” category may have provided the most laughs of the evening when Josh leapt from the coach to the window sill demonstrating “Spiderman.”