The Children’s Museum: D-Meetup Style

Lots and lots of people visit the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis on the weekends. A fair number of D-Meetups take place on the weekends, too. And over this past weekend, the Indiana DOC crew did both.

The group, consisting of Cherise Shockley and her husband & daughter, Scott & Niya, Michael Hoskins, Jenny Pritchard, and April & I, met up at the Children’s Museum on Saturday for an afternoon of fun and D-bonding.

We began our museum tour with some arts & crafts time; there was a table where we could create our own musical instruments out of paper plates, Popsicle sticks, a bit of string, and some beads.  Cherise had me draw a meter on the front of hers, while Michael worked to create one of his own.  That activity was part of the much larger Rockstars Cars & Guitars exhibit, which also included a band of teenagers singing classic rock & roll songs. Badly!

Everyone was rather hungry as it was around lunchtime when we got together, so we decided to take a break and get something to eat at the food court.  Big Mistake!  I found a hair in my sandwich.  I’m not talking about a little short one either.  This thing was at least 10 to 12 inches long!  So much for being hungry.  That ruined everyone’s appetite.  I was so mad I couldn’t hardly see straight, and everyone knew it.  I do believe I deserve a medal for keeping my composure and handling the situation as well as I did.  I simply took the food back to the register, pointed out the foot long hair on my tray, and asked for my money back.  I got it, and went on my way.

We resumed our tour from there and made our way to the second floor to check out the big Etch A Sketch 50th anniversary exhibit.  That was really cool.  There were pictures of Elvis, Michael Jackson, Jay Z, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, and many more.  It’s hard to believe that some of the pictures hanging in that gallery were actually made on an Etch A Sketch.  Can you imagine how long it would have taken to create those?  Would take far more time and patience than I have; that’s for sure.  I’ll stick to my sketchbook and pencils. 🙂

From there Niya lead us to the Barbie Fashion Experience exhibit, where she got to dress up in different costumes, and walk the runway like a super model.  She was strutting her stuff all over that runway and having a great time doing so.  I so wish I could be her age again some times, or at the very least, possess the energy that she has.  By the time we left at 5:00 p.m., Niya had lead us through nearly all of the major exhibits spread among the museum’s 4 floors;  Dinosphere,  Take me there: Egypt, The Power of Children, and ScienceWorks just to name a few.

April and I wandered off on our own for a bit so I could get pictures of the one exhibit that I really wanted to see.  Dale Chihuly’s Fireworks of Glass.  That piece of work is amazing.  According to the information available at the museum, the glass tower stands 43 feet tall, and consists of over 3,200 pieces of blown glass.  The entire exhibit contains over 4,800 pieces of glass, and weighs in at a whopping 18,000 pounds.  It’s just plain AWEsome!

No D-Meetup would be complete without a group photo, and that was the second to the last thing that happened before the meetup ended.  Many thanks to Scott for taking the picture for us.

The very last thing involved me making good on a promise I made to Niya during our lunch break.  I had Little G out of the bag, and tossed him over to Niya, and told her she could hold onto him while we were in the museum.  She got rather upset by the thought of having to give him back, so I promised her she would have a d-ninja doll before I headed back to Fort Wayne on Sunday.  I was simply going to pay a visit a the Hoskins’ house, get another d-ninja, and drop it off to her on the way home.  At the last minute, though, I decided to give her mine.  She just lit up with excitement.  I snapped a quick photo of Niya & Little G for posterity sake, and that was that.

It was a wonderful ending to a rather fun and exciting D-Meetup.  April & I had a blast, and it was great meeting Cherise, Scott, Niya, and Jenny for the first time, and great seeing Michael again, too.   Hope you all had as much fun as I did.  Thanks for coming!

Indy D-Meetup Photos