NASCAR Hall of Fame

My cousin Cole drives a truck all over the country, and he had a job bringing him within an hour of our neck of the woods, so he got to spend a day with us before hitting the roads again. (Which turned into two days thanks to a leaking and dead battery problem, I can't say that I minded, but I think he might have ;)


Since we've lived here for over 4 years, we haven't taken advantage of one of the things in the blood of Charlotte North Carolinians.



Which is shameful, because I have a 5 year old car fanatic who's second word was CAR, and he went through some serious withdrawals when we lost our Disney's Cars DVD for a few days.



Honest opinion of the museum? Great for the fan. And for the older child who can read and is interested in cars. Bad for the 2 year old.

Painfully obvious that I need a new camera. This just isn't cutting it for scrapbook memories now is it?

There were a few fun things to do for Max, which is putting his hands onto and touching everything he can. They had a pitstop mock up where the kids practiced being fast at lifting the car, changing a tire, and filling up the car with fuel. LOTS of buttons for Max to push.

They got to pretend to be a commentator on a clip from a race, then it played it back for them to hear/see on a big screen. Max's comments were more along the lines of "Can you hear me, Mom?" And Maren's were "Why is that car being a jerk butting in line?" We have some culture work cut out for us.

Maren wanted to mimmic an Old Navy commercial. And Max willingly participated.

This stretch of the museum had several actual historic cars from over the years, which all my kids were fascinated to see. But Max wanted to get into every single one of them. And Kellan enjoyed the downward grade of the slope with slick tiles to practice his baseball slide. Over and over and over.

All in all, it was a fun day. And a fun unexpected day again of seeing Cole while we helped him find a place to get his battery situation remedied yesterday. But it was exhausting for me, so I declared Thursday a day of the lazies. And during ONE hour where my attention was diverted onto someone else besides the kids, Maren managed to get a wild hair and take things/move things/pack things/ and altogether make a mess in every single room of my house. I have no idea how to deal with her independence and flat out petulance for respect of other people/things sometimes. But Thursday's declaration of a day for the lazies was still in effect, so I had a Scarlet O'Hara moment when I said

"I can't think of this today, I"ll go crazy if I do. I shall think of it tomorrow."