Free Thursdays

In my quest to have a fun but frugal summer, I discovered that on the 3rd Thursday of every month, the museums in Tacoma are free! The only catch is that admittance is only free at specific times. So with the help of Grannie and Grandpa and an itinerary of what I hoped would be our day, we headed downtown to see what we could see.

We decided to meet at 11am and park at the Tacoma Dome parking garage so we could ride the Tacoma Link (which is always free!) Addison was so excited to be riding a "train", I think we'll have to take another trip down just to do that!

The Farmer's Market was our first stop, since it closed around 2pm. We didn't want to miss any of the goodies! The kids would have stayed at this fountain all day if we'd let them. The weather was perfect...not hot and not raining!

Grannie treated everyone to pretzels from Hess Bakery. I remember selling these same pretzels for German club a million years ago... Raymond got the JUMBO version and then didn't want to eat it in public because so many people commented on it! Funny kid!

Our first stop was the Tacoma Art Museum, which opened its doors for free at noon.

I was a little worried about the kids and whether they would be able to handle this, but I thought we'd try it. The art museum is obviously not strangers to kids because they gave each of my kids a sketch pad and pencil at the entrance and this kept them relatively occupied while we were there.

At the end of our "art tour", we stopped in at the kids' studio and all three kids enjoyed using various mediums to create their own artwork. It was really pretty neat. They had several "suitcases" full of different things and you just choose one and take it to your table. We stopped on their balcony on our way out to have our picnic lunch.

Our next stop was the Museum of Washington State History. We timed it perfectly, since it opened for free at 2pm. We had been here before, so knew better what to expect; lots of interactive, hands-on stuff for my busy kiddos!

Addison loved the dress-up area!

Here is Grannie, helping the boys with a map jigsaw puzzle. Raymond has become quite a history buff and wanted to read everything. The younger kids didn't have the patience for this so we'll have to send Ray back with daddy so they can take their time! In fact, we went outside to let them play while we waited until 5pm for the next museum free time to roll around.The boys found a "secret" hiding place under the bridge. On second thought (could be bums down there) we decided they shouldn't probably be playing down here, so headed on to our next destination...

Next stop, Glass Museum!

Raymond took this at the bottom of the Grand Staircase. Such beautiful glass artwork!I took a lot of pictures on our trip, but obviously none inside the museums! I eventually turned the camera over to Raymond and Grannie really got a kick out of all the pictures he was snapping. Apparently it reminded her of me! She asked if I remembered that first Kodak disc camera they bought me. I wonder how many rolls of film they had to develop over its lifetime! Anyway... I, personally, am very thankful for digital cameras now that I have my own kids!