the crayola experience.

on thursday, i took the girls to “the crayola experience”. it’s about an hour away in easton, pa, which is where the crayola factory is. who doesn’t love crayola. anna the artist was so excited. hazel too. isaac didn’t want to go. so he spent a long and boring day at the camper with derek.

i think this is technically the back of the building, but the front was on a roundabout with no parking, so this was our best outside view. i wanted some pics in the front, but we ran out of time.

the crosswalk from the parking garage to the museum ws crayons. 🙂

our first stop was to make our own customized crayons. (allow me to take this time to make a disclaimer – i didn’t get great pics at this place. the lighting was a little weird and i was often trying to get a pic of what the girls were doing, which meant the backs of their heads.)

their customized crayons.

next up was a room where you could color a digital image and then it would be projected onto a giant aquarium wall. i made a whale. anna made a diver. hazel made a crab.

lots of giant crayons and markers and such everywhere you looked.

coloring.

there was a toddler play place. hazel was a fan.

we watched a bunch of crayons get made and packaged in a mini crayon factory. this part was pretty cool. and we even got to keep one red crayon each.

when you arrive, you are given two tokens each. one for the customized crayon and one for the model magic vending machine. obviously, we were not content to settle for two colors of model magic, so we puchased several more tokens so we could have every color of clay. and then we spent a LONG time making stuff.

like trains.

and french fries (and chicken nuggets, i think?).

i made a whale. again.

anna and i made a pizza.

anna’s fries and “nuggets” and i’m not sure about the green bit.

sliced pizza.

the crumpled up sliced pizza mixed into a nice pumpkin color, so that was next.

finally, it came to my attention that we were running out of time. they closed at 4 and it was almost 3 and we had only completed one floor out of three. so we packed up and scurried around to see everything else. but first, a pic with a red marker statue.

the water table exhibit was way less cool than we had hoped. it was a crayon boat that you moved through a series of locks and conveyor belt elevators, under the watchful eye of the exhibit czar. no horseplay. hazel could reach and she was grumpy. but anna made her way through, armed with extensive knowledge of the mechanics of locks, thanks to our time in lockport, ny.

the one spot that hazel could reach and get her sleeves soaking wet. (to match her shirt front from a water fountain “incident”).

some quick painting…

and then dancing with some digital marker friends. they mimicked your motions. hazel was happy to just test out some minimal arm movements. anna went totally bonkers and made the marker look like it had four broken limbs. i only have video of this, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

the fourth floor was all about some melted crayons. first, we made crayon dripping art.

then we melted a crayon into another shape. dinosaur for hazel, crayhon figurine guy for anna.

it took four minutes to melt, shape and cool. and it was the longest four minutes of our lives.

while we waited, a pic with this cool crayola colors wall in the background was in order.

more drippy art. sadly, our time was cut short when a worker came through and packed in a bunch of new crayons to be melted for the next day. like they couldn’t have waited a few more minutes when the place was actually closed. thanks, worker guy.

(overall, i wasn’t impressed with the staff. a few of them were friendly and nice. but a lot of them were grumpy teens or young adults who didn’t really want to be bothered by anything. i heard one girl snap at a kid a couple of times. i guess i would think if you chose to work in a place like this, you’d be a little more kid friendly. or just friendly in general. anyhow, that’s my only negative on the day).

after the place was closed, we visited the store, which was the most magical, rainbowy, kid art supply-y place you’ve ever seen.

anna decided to purchase some paints. she could choose 16 colors. it was a very hard decision.

just when we were leaving, we realized we never took a pic with the world’s largest crayon, near the front. we asked a security guard if we could quickly run over and get a pic and he was very nice, and led us over and actually took the pic for us. so, not all the employees were terrible. ;). anyhow. me and the girls and the worlds largest crayon. hooray.

and that’s the end of the best day ever for the annababy. :).