Space Center Houston

A couple months ago when my in-laws were in town, we took the kids to Space Center Houston at NASA for the day.  Our 3 yr. old son, Christian, is obsessed with space.  He absolutely loved this place!  His dream is to be an astronaut and visit Mars - along with Uranus ("Her-nus"), the Sun, and the "Dark Nebula".  He told me the other day that he wants a Hubble Space Telescope toy and a Lunar Module toy for Christmas.  And even though Ella doesn't read space books every day like her brother, she still thought Space Center Houston was pretty cool.  And, the trip definitely counts as an educational field trip for our homeschool.

Here is Buddy (a.k.a. Christian) standing next to a rocket booster.

This was pretty cool - it's the front end of a space shuttle.  You climb up the stairs to see the cockpit inside.  That's me, Christian, Ella (behind the blue bars) and some random kid at the top of the stairs.  Who did that kid belong to anyway?!

It's stuff like this that makes lil' Buddy's heart sing.  Astronauts, replicas of the International Space Station, pure joy for a little boy.

In addition to a very large play structure for your child to get lost in, there is a miniature kid-size version of Mission Control in the kid's area.  Buddy loves buttons, so this was perfect for him.  My child did get lost in the play structure, by the way.  We were able to locate him by following the sound of his screaming.

Here's Court trying on a space helmet.  Those things are pretty heavy, by the way.  I guess it doesn't matter much in zero gravity, though.

Unfortunately, I don't have many good pictures of Ella at the Space Center (and the only picture I could find of my in-laws was one with Christian throwing a fit in it).  But, here is Ella looking down into the astronaut training building.  They have exact replicas of a space shuttle and of all the different components of the International Space Station for the astronauts to train on.

Me and my Space Buddy.

This, my friends, is one of the three Saturn V rockets.  It's HUGE and seems to go on forever.  It is so worth going to NASA.  I really hope Mr. Obama changes his mind about cutting NASA's budget - the work they do there is so important to our daily lives, whether we realize it or not.  Plus, they need to stay in business so my little boy can have a job there one day :o)