A few weeks ago, my good friend Chai came up to visit us from Chicago. Chai has two amazing girls, A & V, who have most definitely inherited their mother’s creative bone. I’ll get to that at the end of this post. Anyway, we met up on Monday morning at The Domes. It was an incredibly busy day there, as it’s free for MKE county residents on Monday mornings AND it was a no school day. So after waiting in a line outside, we made our way in and hit up the Desert Dome first.
No huge happenings in this dome, other than Baby S (I guess I could stop calling her a baby by now) was ENTHRALLED with the just-her-size railings. She was interested in pretty much nothing else.
We showed our friends all the cacti, plants growing in boots (“whaaaaat?!?! that’s so silly!!”), and then headed to the show dome to see the trains.
After being told not to sit on the ledge, we snapped some pictures at the blue wall.
And then danced.
The kids found their way to the stage and showed Chai and me their best moves. And as you can see, those moves were amazing.
Because it had been like 60 whole minutes since my kids had eaten, they were starving and insisted on eating lunch. We headed to the lobby to find a table, but because of the huge crowd, we settled in on the floor for a makeshift picnic of hummus, veggies, fruit, muffins and cheese.
Chai and I are friends from high school, who didn’t really spend much time together until I was pregnant with twins and freaking out. I called her up because she had 2 year old twins at the time, and she seemed to have it together. Chai was a huge support to ensuring me that we’d all be ok (and look, we are!). So fast forward a few years to this trip, eating a picnic lunch, and trying to catch up with your friend while managing six kids. We decided to wrap things up so we could head back to my house to get a little closer to finishing a conversation/thought/sentence.
But first the kids needed to burn off some energy by leaping and jumping on the vents. I’m sure the staff at the domes appreciated it.
So back at the house, we got out our arts and crafts supplies, and went crazy. A & V made some amazing 3D structures of houses, lamps and more. I could tell that my kids hadn’t ever thought to build UP from their paper, and it opened a new facet of art for them!
Did I mention that Chai is an artist? She’s got some really unique and interesting work, here and here! In Milwaukee! Bloom has art classes and workshops for kids and adults, and I’ve been meaning to get to one. Look for that to come…
Once again, I’m so happy to have Mitchell Park Domes as a resource here, it’s a very laid back and mellow adventure that showed our out of town friends a little of the city. And thanks to Chai for making the trip!
A. Storm
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