Year 4, February 23rd-24th, 2019: Veni, Vedi, Veci! At the Children's Museum!

....was it all about Star Trek today?  Well, according to our photos and videos, it's mostly about Star Trek.  Why?  Because it was crazier than crazy at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis! I KNEW it was going to be like that.  However, the staff at TCM are amazing!  They processed people threw ticket lines and meet and greet lines so quickly you didn't have time to be bored or check your watch!  It took only 10 minutes to get tickets and 30 minutes in line to get to the photo op.  The line into the play area was much longer because I'm sure kids weren't coming out as quickly, so we actually skipped that altogether today.  We'll go again within the next month and enjoy it in the afternoon when the school groups aren't there and toddlers are home taking naps.  Thankfully, we had made a plan and knew what we could actually accomplish today and did it!  We wanted to take Jared to the Star Trek exhibit that is only here for 2 months because Jared and I both grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation and our parents remember watching the original series as it aired.  And Jared and I had watched a couple of seasons of the "Enterprise" TV show, and my family had watched all the other movies/TV series over the years.  The exhibit was mostly about the TV show but the exciting part was that all the costumes and props and models were the REAL DEAL not replicas!  Jared even took several pictures and sent them to his family because he understood how neat it was to see the Enterpirse - D (from TNG) model that they used in actual filming the show (see pics below).

Growing up, my dad taped from live TV all the TNG episodes, keeping track of when they aired and if we missed one, he would leave a spot on a VHS tape and then go back when it reaired and tape it.  We also sat their and stopped and restarted the tape before and after the commercials were on.  Diehard fan he was.  I really, really wish my parents could have seen this exhibit.  Jared still knew a lot of trivia from the show, too.  I'm glad he was able to experience it and take delight in it.

But the whole reason we went to the "madhouse" as one employee called it, not the "doghouse," was so that Abishai could meet his heroes, the Paw Patrol pups, in costume.  I am grateful the line for the meet and greet was only 30 minutes and not 2-3 hrs like some of the lines at Disney World for some of their characters.  As we waited in line, I reflected on what I did for the other kids.  I did take Justin to see a life sized Thomas when he was 4 yrs old.  We were in Disney World soon after Keturah turned 5 and we met Cinderella, which was more of her favorite at the time than Anna and Elsa (although she hasn't been crazy obsessed like others are).  Benaiah had other experiences when he was young and has seen and gets excited when he sees real life Nemos at aquariums like he did in Chicago last year.  So, yes, I think we've been pretty fair this time around providing a) themed birthday parties and b) experiences with their favorite characters.  Both of those things are things I never experienced as a kid.  We didn't do birthday parties and I didn't meet Ariel until I was over 30 years old.  So I take huge delight and providing these things, when we can and always on a budget, for the kids.  Today's experience was 3 hrs long in total and only cost us $13.75.  How? Medicaid's Access Pass got us in for $10.  We used the locker 3 times and paid $1.25 each time.  We brought our lunch.  Parking is free.  Photo op was free (because our museum is so cool like that!)  Even the staff would take your cell phone and snap your picture if you wanted.  And despite being crazy, the staff still had smiles on their faces and did their best to keep things moving without being gruff and rude, especially when little ones suddenly get scared of costumed characters.  I made sure to thank them as much as I could today.

But not everyone was happy.  We saw a pretty nasty verbal fight between two mothers, one who may or may not have touched another mother's child because that family was standing in the middle of the overcrowded hallway.  Both were rude.  Both could have had more grace.  And I just keep thinking, "Don't go to NYC or some other busy crowded city where you are going to be pushed and shoved.  It's the norm and there's no need to fuss."  But, maybe some families didn't expect such crowds.  Maybe this was their only opportunity to be here today because they paid full price or they can only come on weekends. How blessed are we that we have been here so many times that we noticed when there's a new coat of paint on the walls? And I also recognize some employees! Or parts of exhibits repurposed for other exhibits, lol (we'll see that next time).  But, for us, VENI, VEDI, VECI, we came, we saw, we conquered!

Abishai crashed on the way home, and we spent the rest of the day, well, resting.  Sunday is again one of those long, long days with extra rehearsals and meetings.

Abishai was a little too excited to see Paw Patrol and sneaked out of his room the night before....

Fuel up! Aldi's had PIZZA flavored bagels so Justin dressed it up as a bagel pizza!  They also had gluten free bagels with "everything" in it, so I have those, too!

Too bad this only lasts a couple of months, but we are so excited!

The room was pretty dark so my pictures aren't great.  If we go back before it closes, I'll quickly go through it again and work on better lighting.  But I did take the time to look closely with my naked eyes at the items and "take in" the experience.

Warp drive!

Geek alert!

Damage on the hull!

They had this awesome model of the original series' tv studio!  I loved seeing the layout of how they could film different scenes.  You know how I love the "how does it work?" things!  But Jared was the one who explained what part was which from memory!

Corridors and sick bays.

The bridge, that didn't seem very big, and maybe the shuttle bay or engine room.  And the transporter room was on the other side.

This model is HUGE!  And I just kept thinking about all the "behind the scenes" footage I've seen of Star Trek and Star Wars where the model ships stay in place and the cameras pan around them, zooming in and out.  I've actually seen a documentary of this very model, I think, being unboxed and then set up to repair.  I told the kids that curating these "artifacts" is a big job.  You don't realize just how much work goes on behind the scenes to maintain, store, move, etc these things.  From barcodes and keeping track of what each museum/studio owns and where it's located to lending it out to museums and handling it all correctly as to not damage it.  So awesome!

Eek! Engines!

Oh how many times have I seen these close ups on the show and wondered where each part goes in relation to the interior shots.  And how many times have I seen this (and other ships) be blown apart in movies/episodes or damaged.  Wow!

See description below!

Deep Space Nine!  It was so fun turning the corners and being able to declare what items these things were because I recognized most of them!  Or at least which show they were on.  Can you imagine this space station and the cameras going around it?  There's even a bar at the top holding it in place!

Just a model!

Now this was a cool trivia moment of Jared.  He knew exactly where these next 4 golden ships hung.  They were on the TNG show we grew with, in the briefing room!  And one of the display signs read that the curators have purposefully left the smudges left by crew people and even one of the warp drives were a bit bent.  So authentic!  This one was the Enterprise 1701-C

Enterprise 1701

Enterprise 1701-D from the TNG series.

Enterprise 1701-B from either an original movie or the original series.

Just a few of the accessories we saw!  To think that as kids, we thought these things really worked!  And look how closely the item on the right looks to a modern day iPad! Our culture was definitely impacted by the space race and ALL the TV shows depicting outer space (including Doctor Who) in the 1960's. 

The dreaded Borg cube!  The Borg used to scare me to death!  "Resistance is futile!"  Oh how I remember when Captain Jean-Luc Picard became a Borg!  I was terrified he wouldn't return!  Eek!  This model was from the movie "First Contact" in 1994.

The details they needed to make the filming seem real!  Wow!

"Set your phasers to stun/kill!"  But it's just a metal thing with lighted buttons!

We are borg!

U.S.S. Enterprise for Deep Space Nine and Voyager, the two TV shows that were decent, but not as popular as the original series in the 1960's and The Next Generation series in the 1990's.

I almost wish Abishai wasn't in this picture.  However, this is the ORIGINAL panels for the ORIGINAL bridge on the ORIGINAL series!  If you look up close, you can see how beat up it is from the years of filming and I'm sure getting knocked around in travel.  It's just probably playwood, some buttons, and lights.  So primitive!

Again, so primitive!  And yet, we believed they did stuff!

Spock's costume!

The original Captain James T. Kirk's chair!

It's so rough and beat up!  It's crazy how real it seemed through the TV set!

James T. Kirk original costume.  On the sleeve, I noticed a piece of the armband was missing, probably from use.

One of my favorite characters, Counselor Deanna Troi, her telepathic abilities, and her romance with Commander William T. Riker.  And her hair was gorgeous!

My absolute favorite character! Jean-Luc Picard!  From the British accent, to his famous phrases like "Tea, Earl Grey, hot!" and "Make it so, #1." and "Engage!" and maybe, just maybe, the bald look? Lol.

I loved this guy, too, Geordi La Forge, played by Levar Burton.  I remeber Mr. Burton from all his Reading Rainbow episodes, too.  And I liked Worf and Data and Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan, and Wesley Crusher, who I had a crush on.  Yup, this was my childhood.

More ships!  And check out all the little wires for all the lights!

Romulans!

Klingons!

Klingon Warbird!

Yup, I remember this Klingon weapon.  Did you know, you can actually learn how to speak Klingon?

Park of Spock's space costume for the first Star Trek movie mad in 1979.

Data, the android, with his quest to figure out his emotions, and his silly cat! I always wondered how the make up artists attached the computer pieces to the actor's head.

These kids aren't our kids, but what a fun little crawl through space.  I forget what it's called, but I remember many an episode on TNG where the actors had to crawl through these tunnels to fix things or escape an intruder on the ship.

Women empowerment!  The first women commander of a Starfleet ship!  At least the first one we've seen.  Since Star Trek is set way far in the future, you would think that the women's lib movement would be stronger than this.  Star Trek:Voyager was a decent series too.

The Gorn.  I'll just let you read the panel below.  Jared knew it was from the pilot episode!  It reminded me of all the alien costumes I've seen from Doctor Who, which started at the same time as the original Star Trek series.

Tribbles!  There's so many memes about these guys!

Original tribbles script!  Basically, these things multiply rapidly and take over the ship!

Examples of how they original looked.

How they actually look now after years of use/misuse/storage/transportation.

The Doctor Leonard McCoy

More light panels for communication

Uhura

The Klingon battle weapon.  How many times have we've seen Worf use this? And I've watched documentaries on how the make up artists had to put on the mask each time.

The original Kahn from the movies!  There were some wires on the arms going to a lighted watch perhaps?

Justin said, "Hey, look, Mom, it's Doctor Strange!"  No, honey, it's Benedict Cumberbatch and he's been in many, many movies and TV shows.  He played the younger/alternate version of Kahn in one of the newer movies with the younger version of the original series crew.

After we left the Star Trek exhibit, we ventured outside to the atrium to find this.  Oh my word.  That's a long line to see a costumed character.  And if you've read the blog long enough, you've seen pictures of this place practically empty.  It's about a 45 minute wait from that sign down there.

But this, my friends, is the much longer wait to get into the play area.  It wraps around the atrium twice!

Sorry, bud, this is as close to the play area as we are getting today.  We'll come back another day.

Marshall is down there!

I tried to take a picture with the pup in the background just in case the line was 2 hrs long and Daddy wasn't up for it.  Thank goodness we were wrong and Daddy wanted to do this for Abishai.

Waving to Marshall before they switched out the costumed character to Chase.  Abishai prefers Marshall, but thankfully, didn't throw a fit.  He was a very good, patient, understanding boy today.  I think he was a bit overwhelmed, too.

Hi, and bye, Marshall! "I'm fired up!"

Chase is on the case!

Chase has his pup pack!  And check out the sweetest video Justin took of Abishai meeting Chase while I took the photos!

Oh my word.  A boy's dream come true!

I'm so glad he's not afraid of costumed characters like Keturah was!

It was only supposed to be one photo per family, but I took these as we were setting up for the actual photo.  They turned out so well!

Aww, too cute!

I didn't realize that "Leonardo" the dinosaur's head was upside down.  Cool!  We went to the Dinosphere because Abishai wanted to and we thought it would be a little quieter, but not today.  It's definitely not as fun with this many people.  I also learned from the paleontologist that this particular specimen is mummified and then fossilized.  That means that the skin and muscles and tendons were preserved along with the bones and they can obtain more information from that than just the bones themselves.  Pretty cool!

This particular specimen is just a place holder for another bone they are piecing together and will put in the window soon.

A different angle than I usually take of the T-rex.  I actually originally had both T-rexes in the shot, but I was looking up the butt of one of them so I decided that was inappropriate, lol.  About a month ago, the man who discovered these skeletons visited the museum for the day because it had been 20 years since he had found them as a 14 yr old in Montana I believe.  The skulls are not original, and there is a chart somewhere of what is real bone and what is a cast of a bone.  But pretty neat that the original founder was here!

 Thunder and lightning in the Dinosphere!

Can you find he dinosaur that is a different type of dinosaur?  They had several of these cases! There's a t-rex in the middle of all the stegosauruses.

A quick chance to play with the figurines.

Daddy lifted Abishai up to the see the train that pushes the train cars up the hill instead of pulling them.  It's a very unique train and only here in Indian.

This display has been around forever, but I don't usually take the time to appreciate it.  It's good to take Jared along because he has a set of fresh eyes to rediscover the details of the museum.

Like this part here.  We never usually play with the deep sea diving stuff, but Abishai wanted to put on all the gear and go swimming and exploring!  Awesome!  He literally tried to climb over the cannons and made swimming motions.  We had gone into the "Treasures of the Earth" to see if the digging area was less busy than the dinosaur one, but it wasn't.  I wanted to show Jared how much Abishai loved the "construction site."  Oh well, next time.

The cutest diver around!

Keturah tried to fix the corral (it's supposed to be that way).

Having a second pair of hands and eyes to watch Abishai, I was able to see things I don't normally look for like the ship above the diving area.

And the diver him/herself.

I insisted on one last stop before we got out of there.  To go up a few levels and take a bird's eye view of the Enterprise 1701-D from up above.  It really is a ginormous model about 4 ft across and 5 or 6 ft in length?

Borg! Eek!

The history timeline according to Star Trek.  And then they added when each series ran.

Great pose, Justin!

"Smile!"

Jared took this picture and shared it with his parents and brother.  Sweet!

This one, too!

Another view from above with my iPhone.

Justin's hand, "Live long and prosper" a Vulcan famous saying.

All the characters!  Later on, Abishai told Grandma that Skye and Everest weren't there.  I'm sure Skye is in the play area as a life size figurine we can take a picture with on our next visit, but I'm not sure on Everest.  We did get a glimpse of Jake's house though, so who knows.  We watched a Facebook live video the other day about what the play area looks like and I can't wait to get in there and see it!  He's going to love it!

All tuckered out of course.  He has his blankie and his Zuma Paw Patrol socks on.

I still sleepy, Mom!  Can I have the rest of my lunch? He thought he had more things in his lunch, but there was just a couple of treats left.

Just a sidenote: It just took me about 4 hrs, start to finish, uploading pictures to my computer, backing them up on cd's and checking the cd's, uploading to websites, journaling them all, etc.  And this is what takes up my evenings.  My online scrapbook.  Worth every minute.  This IS my hobby.  I don't care if it's read or not, it's just something I want to do.  Fourth year in!

Sunday - very, very full, but helpful, happy, and oh so windy.

Bailey's mom posted this picture on her Facebook or Instagram and said she forgot how loud sleepovers can be.  That's Keturah on the left and Bailey on the right.  Keturah got to sleep over at her house on Friday night.  Don't they look adorable reading together?  Keturah has done that with Everly and Nora, too.  Sweet!

When did this kid get so big?

9 more weeks.  That's all Gary has left as "Lead Teacher."  I think the titles have been switched from "Lead Servant" to "Lead Teacher" now that Dan has 95% of the responsibilities of the role now. It just doesn't seem possible that this is the end of an era.  And everyone has a different perspective on it.  We don't know of any announcements or plans yet for a celebration.  This is just the last Sunday (on the 28th) he will preach at Indian Creek as a staff member.  I do know that some people plan to come from out of town to be there.  I'm praying Aaron and Shauna and the girls can come, but it all depends on how Shauna is feeling and her chemo schedule.  Sigh.  I just hope something big is being planned because you can't talk about and do this transition thing for like 4 years and NOT make a big deal celebration at the end.  Gary of course doesn't want the attention, but I believe that a pat on the back is essential to a human being's emotional and mental health.  Just ask me how I know.  I know I need to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant." every once in awhile.  Nine weeks and counting......