the valentine nest: In the good ol’ summertime…

Our final destination on the Valentine Summer Road Trip 2012 was Dearborn, Michigan. It is the place that my in-laws grew up, met, married & started their family. For that reason alone, I love this town : ) Rob lived there on & off between when he was born & 7th grade so he has many memories of his time there. More sentimental things about the visit to come but for now, here is some of the exploring.....

Dearborn, Michigan is a place has some really neat places to visit. I could hardly wait to get to The Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village. We spent a day there last time when we visited Grandma Virginia & I was really excited to take the girls back & enjoy the whole experience again.

This time around we split it into two days. Robby & I took one entire day (12 1/2 hours to be exact) to be away from the little people in our life. Grandma Virginia & Aunt Edna were in charge of caring for Char & Elo with the help of lots of neighbors who were excited to participate in the excitement. We were grateful for

time to be away with one another.

We started our morning at Panera then headed over to the Henry Ford Museum. We cannot even express how lovely it was to wander around a museum for three hours. We read everything we wanted to read, walked as slow or as fast as we felt like & only went to the restroom once. We were SO relaxed!

This museum is just a few miles away from Grandma Virginia's house & if full of all sorts of interesting things!
As a whole the museum celebrates American ideas & innovations with Henry Ford as the focus. We walked through an exhibit of each decade of the 20th century & had some good laughs as we pretended to be in an 80's music video. We saw some of the toys we played with as kids on display....that was a little weird.

The picture below is a plant engine generator built by Henry Ford. It was MASSIVE! We were looking at it wondering how on earth you even manufacture pieces of metal that size.

Pictured above: a machine that made somewhere around 600 light bulbs every 60 seconds & Rob enjoying the display of weaponry through American History.

I think my favorite exhibit was Heroes of the Sky: Adventures in Early Flight. It was super interesting.

This exhibit covered the first 40 years in American Flight & had lots of planes to look at including a replica of the plane the Wright brothers built & flew in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903. There was another section that had video of the Barnstormers which were pilots & crazy people who did stunts in the air. That is who I am pretending to be in "Flying High Over the Fair" picture ; )

We got to make paper airplanes & fly them toward a target. Let's just say that I followed the directions & still flopped while Rob made his own design & watched his plane fly all the way to the target & escape through a small crack in the "cage" to continue on to its destination. I think we need a boy around to truly benefit from his father's skills in paper airplane making!

We saw some large steam engine trains including the red one pictured below. It was on a Canadian track & was engineered to plow through the snow. They were really neat to look at.

Since it is the Henry Ford Museum, there are LOTS of cars to look at in the Driving America exhibit. The Henry Ford Model T is at the beginning of the Driving America timeline going all the way through present day vehicles. It includes family vehicles, race cars, Presidential cars & even a few non car options like a seg way : )

The Blue Bird No. 1 is thought to be the first School Bus in America built in 1927. It is funny to think how mass production has made it to where you see entire fields full of school buses all over the country.

Pictured above are some of the early car seats.... I am thankful that my children didn't have to try to sleep in one of these on our cross country trek! Also above are two of the presidential vehicles. The one of the left was for Franklin D. Roosevelt & the one on the right was the car that John F. Kennedy was in when he was assassinated. It of course had some additions to it following that tragedy including a top & bullet proof glass.

For the rest of our date day, we headed over to Westborn Market which is similar to a mini Whole Foods. We picked up a smorgasbord (I love that word) of cheese, crackers, pasta salad, dip, chips & a couple Faygo soda pops before driving to Birmingham, MI. for a picnic lunch in the park. We walked around the town & looked at the shops for the afternoon then enjoyed a leisurely dinner at a nearby pub before heading home. It was a great day to spend alone as I had felt like I was reaching my limit of togetherness with our family of 4 (mainly in the car). We came home to two girlies in bed who were really excited to see us & one tired Great Grandma.

On a different day that week, Grandma Virginia took all of us to Greenfield Village which is just next door to the Henry Ford Museum. It was founded in October 1929 as a historic landmark. We could have spent a couple days here to walk through every part of the village but we squeezed in what we could in about 6 hours before the girls let us know they were done if you know what I mean.

It made Charlotte's day to get to touch a sheep right when we came in. They were all on the other side until the train went by & they started moving to where we were standing at the fence. Eloise was happy to look at them from her stroller. We walked into Henry Ford's home that was built in 1861. Charlotte had some great questions as she checked out the kitchen like "where is the oven?" I was in the middle of my explanation about how they didn't have an oven when the staff person said "actually, there is the oven right there." Haha...just the beginning of Charlotte realizing that there are lots of people around who are much smarter than her mommy ; ) The picture below is of Rob & Char in front of his house.

Grandma bought us a wristband that included unlimited rides on the train, carousel & Model T cars. That was a fun addition to our day especially for Charlotte & Eloise. Here we are in one of the Model T's as we left the loading dock for our tour of the Village.

We LOVED the section that had all the old steam engine trains on display. Charlotte has been really into Thomas the Train lately & we watched one of those videos on our car ride so this was right up her alley! She walked up and down the train track stepping only on the wood. She loved picking up the rocks & throwing them. I wasn't surprised.

Our next stop was the carousel which is only a year away from it's 100th birthday. Each animal was hand carved & painted...they were beautiful! Everything about this carousel just made the moment feel special....or should I say moments as we rode it 7 times : )

We live in Orlando & we ride lots of carousels. This one was above & beyond them all with the classic carousel music & fast speed. It was so wonderful. Rob & I have decided that watching Char & Elo enjoy a ride on a carousel is one of our favorite moments as a parent right now. Their faces just light up as they hold on to the pole & go up & down. They look at us and grin these grins that make your heart melt. As sweet as they were on the carousel, the second it stopped Eloise began her death grip on the pole. We had to pry her fingers off so we could get back in line to ride again...and again....and again! I love looking for just the right souvenir when traveling and I came across a carousel christmas ornament which was perfect to commemorate our time spent going round and round.

Another really fun part of the day was watching a puppet show. The girls had never seen one before & Charlotte was intrigued. Eloise was more interested in climbing on the bench & hugging on her sissy. The picture of the girls hugging is another favorite photo from the trip.

Just next to the puppet theatre was a field that had some games from the early 1900's & some sets of stilts. I was really excited to give them a try & was shocked at how difficult it was to stay standing not to mention moving your feet. Rob was giving me a hard time for not being able to do it & then he tried.....he let that one go pretty quickly ; ) I did give Charlotte a little help. She thought it was pretty cool.

I have thought about what I ate for lunch at Greenfield Village for the past 6 years. I could hardly wait to get back & eat it again. There is a restaurant there called A Taste of History. They have many things on their menu but one choice surpasses them all. It is a bread bowl filled with pot roast that is topped with a scoop of mashed potato smothered in gravy. Oh my, I can taste it now just thinking about it! Char & Elo split a Hobo lunch that came in a bandanna on a stick...so cute! We did enjoy some sweet treats including a ginger cookie, vanilla custard and frozen strawberry lemonade. With everything we ate, it's amazing that we had anytime to look around ; )