Wednesday morning Matt was planning to attend the conference again, but he saw everyone he needed to (twice, he said, lol) on Tuesday, so he skipped it.
Instead, we went to the Houston Space Center.
It was amazing – so much fun! We spent about 5 hours there – doing everything!
There’s a tram tour that we took first thing. It’s about 2 hours long and it goes to the Johnson Space Center, which is the actual working part of the place. We got to go up to Mission Control, the old one where all the Apollo missions were controlled from. The current mission control is just on the other side of the wall, and the old one still serves as a backup in case of an emergency. It was very, very cool to be there. We happened to go on the day that the Discovery STS-124 was beginning their journey home, so we got to see the mission control display about that mission in real time. It has the funniest information – like the fact that the astronauts would be going to sleep in 3 hours and 29 minutes. Funny that they are on a schedule, like toddlers!
We took 86 stairs to get up to Mission Control! There’s an elevator, but it’s reserved for those that physically can’t climb the stairs. I don’t suppose they built the building with a bus tour in mind!
We also got to go into the astronaut training facility. It’s a HUGE building, with a long, glass hallway above and to one side. There’s a mock space shuttle, a partial gravity simulator, and a bunch of other really cool looking stuff that was a mystery to me – and most of the people of the tour! Matt knew what everything was, though. He’s fascinated by space exploration – still watches shuttle take offs and landings on CNN or online if he has to. He’s passionate about the space program, we both are, but he’s so very knowledgeable about it!
Looks like Asher is going to be as fascinated by space as his daddy is. He loved the tour – he paid a lot of attention! The training facility seemed to be his favorite part, as we walked along the glass hallway, he kept stopping to press his face against the glass and say “wow!” in the cutest little voice. He sounded like he was just blown away!
When we got back to the Space Center we had lunch in the café area, then let Tessa do all the fun kid activities – there was a huge ball pit/slide area that she played in for quite a while. Matt and I took Asher with us. We played with some of the kid toys, too – climbed inside some mock space ships, etc. – and we wandered around the museum portion and read about all the different space suits that have been used over the years. Fascinating!
I waited in line with Tessa so she could do the zero-gravity jump. They strap you into a harness and you jump on a trampoline as the harness raises, so you gradually jump higher and stay up for longer. It looked really cool, and she was so excited to do it! She chattered and danced around the entire time we were in line – it’s a good thing I waited with her, otherwise she would have lost her place several times. It’s comforting to see her around other kids and realize that she really is a LOT more active than most. Sometimes I wonder if she’s normal and I’m mistaken about normal kid behavior…but I’m not! The other kids are no where near as hyper as she is.
When she finally got to the front of the line and it was her turn she was so busy talking the employee’s ear off that she barely jumped at all! She seemed to enjoy herself, though, which is what counts, I suppose!
Before we left we bought Matt a NASA sweatshirt in the gift shop – a Father’s Day gift from the kids ;)
After being out for 6 hours we were exhausted. We got Mexican takeout for dinner and spent the night in the hotel.
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