Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Pittsburgh Photos



The Allegheny River cuts the city in two, so there are bridges like these every block or two connecting downtown with the North Shore. Our hotel was on the North Shore, so we got to walk across the bridge to head to restaurants and, my favorite, Starbucks! However, the museums were all on our side of the river....



Rachel taking pics from behind us. Emma is too cute not to photograph!





Julia in the Orbitron at the Science Museum. Rachel and Ben also rode it. It was neat because since your stomach always stays in the center, you don't get sick. Also, you control how fast it goes or whether you turn upside down by bending your knees or leaning in a certain direction.




How fun was this? The kids had so much fun on this trampoline, and even Matt couldn't make any cracks about paralyzing accidents or death, because of the bungee cords!



Ben, having his turn.




Emma loved these puppets! There was a neat tree stump tunnel/play area where she, Julia and I played for quite a while.




Naturally Julia gravitated to the Lizard Lady!




This underwater tunnel to view the polar bears was one of the coolest things I've seen at a zoo. The polar bears loved seeing people in there, too--they would swim down along the tunnel and push off of it to surface--showing off for us, it seemed.



This was a huge playground at the zoo. It's much larger than this view. We had to practically drag Julia and Ben from it. They had a pretend game going and had pulled several other children into it.




This is the slide at the Children's Museum that had the "too much gravity" room (as Ben called it) at the top of it. Rachel tried to photograph the checkerboard floor and walls so you might get an idea of how bizarre it was--but unfortunately, the picture didn't show the angle of the floor--the checkerboard pattern camouflaged it.



The water room was fun. Ben was a bit frustrated by this pulley bucket system--the bucket had holes in the bottom, so the water would pour out before he could move the bucket down the row!



Julia, taking the bull by the horns and leading a game--as usual!




These were the lorries at the aviary--when you got a cup of nectar they flew over immediately, landing all over you. So cute! At first Ben was going to do it, but so many birds trying to land on him freaked him out, so I took the cup instead.



Julia was totally in her element, though. If the nectar didn't cost money she could have done this ALL day!



This picture is an amazing one by Rachel. The reason it's amazing is that this African starling was on Julia's hand for about 1 second--she and the lady next to her volunteered to hand feed the birds in the tropical rain forest with live worms. So though the bird looks like it's hanging out, it was really only on Julia's hand for an instant, and Rachel got the photo just in time.



A rare sighting of Rachel! In the 200+ photos we have of the trip, she's in perhaps 3 of them. Emma was taking pictures and rachel allowed her to take one when I reassured her that we can delete any bad photos--but lo and behold, Emma got a great one of her smiling big sis!



This was on the ride home, when Rachel was alleviating boredom by having the kids make the silliest faces they could. I am only showing one. Ben was the king of silly faces! (I know you're shocked...)




This was the statue of Willie Stargell in front of PNC Park, right next to our hotel.



Emma in the hotel room. Rachel took this because Emma actually allowed me to put her hair in pigtails several days, and was proud of how long her hair is getting.....


--Jen

2 comments:

Anonymous Mommy Blogger said...

I wanna go! Love the pictures!

Nan Patience said...

Wow that really looks like fun.