Naval Aviation Musuem

Since Ethan was in no condition to spend time with his friend Mr. Sun, we took the opportunity to visit the Naval Aviation Museum located at the Naval Air Station. Cool thing about the NAM-it's free, and you know I love free!


When we arrived, a tour had just begone so we quickly joined it. It was fascinating to hear the volunteers talk about the history and stories of all the aircraft that surrounded us. One man in the group had experience flying many of the planes during WWII and would pull me to the side and tell me of his adventures and memories seeing the planes brought back. Unfortunately, my children were completely underwhelmed with the whole listening to someone talk about planes for an hour experience. Hayden ran around, climbed over and sat on everything he could get away with! Ellie rolled her eyes and begged to go sit in a cockpit every time I looked her direction. My only saving grace was the fact I had an entire box of fruit leather in the diaper bag and could dole it out when their antics got too bad. After the tour, our guide took us back to his office and gave the kids posters and stickers of the Blue Angels. That made them happy for a while, just until H spied a jar of candy on a desk and had a melt down because I wouldn't allow him have any.

So...we went to lunch! After eating everyone felt much better and we could continue to explore the museum. Upstairs Ellie finally got to sit in the cockpit that she had heard so much about. There was a really neat area where there are the front parts of actual aircraft and they allow you to climb in and check them out up close.


Everything was going great until at one plane, I set H down at the top of a set of stairs so that I could pull E out of the cockpit. H thought he'd be a big boy and climb the rest of the way down but ended up taking the quick way down. He missed three steps and landed right on his head in front of some other visitors to the museum. The woman at the information desk heard his head hit the floor, rushed over and called to get someone with medical experience up to us. I found it funny that their code for an injury is a "Barney" and referred to H as a "Barney Jr." H hollered for a minute or two but was back to his usual self in no time. He refused to let me put ice on his head and when asked where his "boo boo" was, he looked at me like I was crazy. Everyone else finally stopped making a fuss when they saw he was responsive to everything and they couldn't believe he didn't even have a bump or red spot on his head. Of course, I had to joke about him having a hard head like his daddy!

We finished seeing the rest of the planes and the other exhibits and went home exhausted after another long day out and about!