President's Day at the Springfield Museums

Today Paul and I took Marley to the Springfield Museums. We usually go every President's Day, and also several other times during the year. During school vacations the museums have special things going on. Today we started off with a sneak preview of the new Museum of Springfield History. It is not opening officially until October of 2009, but today they had a sneak preview of what was already done. A big part of the museum is going to be about the history of the Indian motorcycles. This is special to Paul because both of his grandfathers and also his father owned Indians. His grandfathers had side cars where his grandmother's rode (I know, I can't imagine it). One of his grandfathers even worked at Indian Motorcycle. Another exhibit will be industry in Springfield. There is a section on Barney and his gift of land for Forest Park, and his ice skate business. They had old Milton Bradley games. They also had a huge mural of downtown Springfield, probably around 1935-40. It looks like it is going to be very interesting. Then we headed to the George Walter Vincent Smith museum. They always have a couple of kid's craft type things going on. Marley loves these. Then we went to the Art museum. They had a scavenger hunt there which I really liked. They gave you a paper with things from A-Z that you had to find in pictures. That was really fun. We ended up at the Science Museum where we spent most of the time in the new dinosaur exhibit. All in all, a very fun day!