fbhjr | Godkids day 1 & 2

The kids and their dad made it up Saturday daytime instead of 2AM. Honestly, I think that worked out well for everyone.

We had planned an escape room thing at noon, but they were nice enough to push it off to late afternoon for us.

We did the Star ship space rescue one: https://liveactionescapes.com/escape-rooms/starship-escape/
It’s pretty cool. You’re on a crashing spaceship, have to figure out how to take controls and save the ship.
They actually have a full station bridge with starship simulator. If you can get there you actually can fly the ship.
We got there, but the enemy folks shot us down before we landed. Sad.

We solved almost all of the puzzles there was one we couldn’t solve so I had to cheat and ask myself 5 minutes ahead for the answer. That’s really cheating because they have a sign that says "no using the Force".
But, we just weren’t getting it. And, it’s not too much cheating to ask yourself "when the light goes on, tell me what position those switches are in", right?

Anyhow, we counted it as a win, even if we were shot down because we did actually get to fly the ship.

Monday, we set off for Salem. I don’t get along with Salem. So preparations were needed.

Preparations included stopping for brunch:

We had hoped to do a boat ride, but due to the fairly heavy rain we just went to the museum.

The Peabody Essex is a very nice museum: https://www.pem.org
I thought it was hilarious when a woman there asked the person at the ticket booth what the "theme" of the museum was.
The ticket woman jumped through a lot of hoops about how to say "It is a museum of stuff that Yankee traders bought, traded, stole and looted for the last 300 years."
She did not use that phrasing…
One of the things I do like about the museum as they do own up to the looting. They don’t trumpet it, but they don’t deny it either.

Anyhow, they had a nice exhibit on natural influences on modern design.

Including robot dogs.

Backpacks:

And, benches.

We built birds too.

I thought this was cool. It’s just a sealed chamber with sand and a fan. You can control the fan’s direction to show how sand dunes form.

My wife thinks they went too far with the "art only" door and it should have been a real exit.

The hall of seafaring is pretty empty as they redecorate.

The stranger art always seems to intrigue Ben, even as he says he doesn’t like it.

Although this one I think was lost on him. Given it is about the presidential election the year he was born, I can understand he might not understand all involved.

Remembering that election well, I thought it was hilarious.

There was a lot of discussion of the 7 deadly sins rendered at carousel horses.

After lots of talking about it, it did turn out we had correctly IDed the sins.

My wife hurt her back the other day and is still in pain about it. She’s trying to hide it, but only manages so much.

This exhibit was big for them.

Ben liked this hat.

I liked this.

My wife this one.

There was a lot of discussion about who was serving the drinks and what their story might be.

There was also an exhibit of modern photographs.

We were allowed to take photos, but many didn’t come out well. They were interesting. I thought the ones where she used 150 old methods to take photos of battle fields from the Civil War were very interesting.

And, they had chairs.

I guess Gabriele liked it as she stood in line to watch the video on it.

After the museum, my wife rested while I took the kids to the comic book store in Salem.

I did not stop at the various haunted houses or witch museums.

We did stop to do a raid.

The place was also swarming with Evees.

On the way back we stopped at the mall as my wife was looking for some special sneakers. (They didn’t have them.)

I wanted to eat at the conveyer belt sushi place, but was outvoted.