Last year we purchased a family membership at the McKinley Museum here in Canton, Ohio for about $49.  Doing so not only got us into McKinley for free but since McKinley is part of the ASTC reciprocal program we could get free or discounted admission into many other science museums around the US and the world as well. But then I started learning about memberships in other places that included zoo and science museum reciprocal privileges. The two I learned about were  Boonshoft near or in the Dayton, Ohio area (family membership $79) and Coyote Point Museum in California ($65).

Several weeks ago I purchased our new family membership from Coyote Point. Now, we don’t have any plans on ever going to California (though I was born there) but the price was better.

Before I bought though, I called a few places here in Ohio to see what admission would be. We will get free admission to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and the Akron Zoo. I think Cosi and McKinley may also be free. Now we can get into a variety of science museums AND zoos for FREE or discounted admission! Since I’m homeschooling now, this is a great thing

Today we broke-in our new Coyote membership by visiting the Akron Zoo for free but paid $2 in parking. My favorite exhibit was the jellyfish and the touch pool /kids play area near the jellyfish.

Do you have or know of a membership to anywhere special that the Hall of Fame Moms readers would benefit from knowing of? Please share in the comment section.

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I introduced our trip in this post. You can read it if you wish.   So without further ado I want to tell you that we had a BLAST at Wild Water Kingdom. Possibly the first time either my husband or I (and of course our boys) had been to Geauga Lake’s water park in Aurora, Ohio. It was about an hour drive one way for us coming from Canton.  *We were provided free entrance, Beagle Bucks and parking to visit the park so that I might write a review about it.

My youngest is a born scaredy-cat, potential party-pooper .  Mr. “I will NOT be the life of the party” preferred this position when we got over to the really fun water park area with water slides and the big bucket that dumps on ya. This was an area where any age could have fun. Their were slides for my little guy and slides for big kids too.

But after awhile {and donning a life jacket} our little guy got into the “party” and appeared to be having a really good time in the water I’m glad to report.

Yeah, I know he doesn’t “look” thrilled here but that might be because his life jacket was up a bit high. He really did start having fun.

So I mentioned in my intro post that we were given Beagle Bucks to spend like cash in the park. We were given $40 (thats $10 per person) and I wanted to report that we were able to spend the day from about 2:45pm -closing at 8pm not needing all of that. Now we did spend just under the $40 but that included a few souvenirs (less than $8) which we could live without but bought anyways.

Since our family is young with small kids we split meals.  Our food purchases were for a  decent-sized pizza stuffed pretzel, a hamburger, a large slice of pizza which the boys shared and bottle of pop (20 oz I think) and a big Icee/slushy thing, a medium dish of the ice cream dots (Fun Dots?)…oh and a bag of cotton candy on our way out of the park   You can bring your own food and drinks to eat outside of the park in an area provided for those who want to do that. You just can’t take food and drink inside the park.

Some things to take note of about this Wild Water Kingdom…

• they have sand too!

• they have a really nice Little Tikes playground area.

• they have lots of those nice  (blue) lounging seats in different areas of the park.

• they have lockers.

• its a good idea to bring a stroller (even if your baby is 4 yrs old) to carry your wet towels and change of clothes.

• you cannot bring food/drink inside the park, but they do provide an area outside of it that you can eat at.

• they have lots of life guards that receive top training and they do have an interesting “head-move-groove” while they’re guarding

• They are giving HallofFameMoms’ readers  a $5 off ticket! Click here to get (and print) your coupon. Save $5 per person up to 4 persons during the 2010 operating season!

Here’s  a short video of clips from our day.

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*And that “not so good” surprise when we got home was finding the freezer door (above the fridge) hadn’t been shut all the way. And it wouldn’t have been too bad except since we got home late from the water park I didn’t find the freezer door like that till the next day. Lots of thawed and some warm (fridge section) food. I ended up throwing just about everything away ;(

Well, the fridge/freezer were due for a cleaning anyways.

Here’s a short video of my husband showing off riding the unicycle on the high-wire at Cosi Science Center in Columbus, Ohio.

Columbus is about a two hour drive for us but we get free admission to Cosi because we have a membership at a local museum here in Canton. You can learn more about getting free admission by checking out my post HERE.

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Last week our kindergartner was on spring break and in addition to taking numerous trips to various playgrounds locally we took a trip to see the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. We can get  free admission to numerous science museums through our family membership we bought at the McKinley Museum here in Canton.  You can learn more about getting a great deal like this by reading this post .

Oh, but first can I say we ate lunch at possibly the nicest largest McDonald’s I’ve ever been too? Lots of tables in the kids area, spacey, super tall slide. I mean. I don’t know, maybe I would’ve gone down it myself if circumstances were a little different. I think my husband said this McD’s was in the Fairlawn area. Not too far from Ghent Road I think.

Okay, so back to the museum. While my husband was parking the car our boys climbed on the big dinosaur statue outside of the museum (pictures at top of post).  And- I thought this was interesting (see the plaque below).

So, the picture below is of the  kiosk that I found most interesting. This exhibit  compared the average life span of men and women from the 1800′s unto more modern times, as well as listing the top 10 or so major diseases. I noticed that all the top diseases for the earlier folks  were all classified as “contagious”.  The average life span of men and women I think was middle age or younger like in the 40′s.  As time moved more current and modern you saw that the contagious diseases were phased out (no doubt thanks to immunizations!) and now we had heart disease and other things in the top 10 spots. Average life span has increased. Possibly close to double that of what it was about 150 plus years ago.

Oh yeah. This was an interactive kiosk. You put your hand over the holes labeled “male” and “female” to create a vacuum or suctions effect and that made a ball rise up to the correct age on the scale.

Moving right along …

I really liked this too. Its a map of the world or most of it and the lit dots represented earthquakes, volcanoes and magma hot spots. I think the bluish colored dots are earthquakes. Very interesting.

Okay so this is the part where I have to say… “Say what?” Yeah *sigh*. Okay. Well, I don’t believe that the moon (or anything else created for that matter- including my appendix)  was an “accident”.  Genesis chapter 1 and  John chapter 1.

This is the Smead Discovery Center for kids. I counted – I think, over 25 learning stations in here. This is Brendan putting the human body together. They had books, living bugs (in aquariums), crafts, puzzles, books, an organ-thing that played bird sounds, a fossil- dig area and more.

And yes, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History does have live animals.  Eagles, owls, otter, deer, a rabbit, raccoon, bobcat and more. Did you see the cute little shriek owl I shared in this post? You’ll have to check him out there.

There was more for sure but you’ll just have to go see it for yourself. They have a parking area that charges $2 per hour I think and then meters along the curb. We easily spent about 3-4 hours there.

I almost forgot! They have a special library area for teachers and homeschoolers to borrow special educational items. I think I was told it cost $30 a year for membership.

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is worth the trip so take the family for a visit soon!

Last week we took the kid’s on our 2nd trip as a family to Cosi, a really big science museum in Columbus, Ohio. This was about a 2 hour drive for us one way (I’m taking my husband’s word on that part- I didn’t time it). Cosi is so big that it took us 2 trips to see it. The first time we went was last August (2009) I think.

If you look at the website (Cosi.org) and see ticket prices you may think, how can going there be called “frugal”? Well, Cosi is part of  the ASTC Travel Passport program that allows free general admission (there may be varying rules for each museum) to other science museums around the USA and in other countries. Since we live near the McKinley Museum in Canton, Ohio, we bought the family membership with includes the ASTC Passport Program thereby allowing us to visit Cosi for FREE!

**If you do buy a membership I recommend calling the places you want to visit to be sure they are still in the program and what part of the admission will be free before you make a long drive to where you wish to visit.

The Membership program we bought last year through McKinley cost us $49.00.  We’ve been to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History for free as well.  We think we may be driving to Cosi again to see the Titanic Exhibit thats coming later this month. You can see how quickly admission prices add up so its smart to buy a membership. I have family near Chicago and we can visit the Field Museum and more out that way too.

I’m sharing some pictures from out latest trip. Above our boys climbed down into a mini-sub. There was a waiting line for this opportunity and that may be why we didn’t do it at our first trip. Oh, the day we went to Cosi was a rainy day and there were a LOTTA people there that day.  While hubby waited in line for us I took the boys around the corner where they could do some interactive “submarine” related stuff.

We got to visit Grossology this time- I think this is new. It was pretty cool, as far as “gross” goes. I’m not all into gross but…

Above is the giant nose you can walk into. Below is a step/slide and crawl area for kids. They get to experience being a piece of food chewed, swallowed (slide into the stomache) and then you crawl out the intestines as …what else but POOP!

And below, in case you needed to “know” what bad breath and more smells like you could “sniff” it at this kiosk-thing. My husband tried the bad-breath and after seeing his grossed-out reaction I knew this one wasn’t for me! What do you think? Do you want to smell …mouth, armpit, anus or foot!!!

There was SOO much to see, like I said, it took us 2 trips. These are just a few pictures of our recent trip. I highly recommend buying the best membership you can and going to Cosi a few times or more! Last year when we visited the temporary exhibit was an Egyptian type complete with mummy and a fake camel for the kids to climb on and get pictures with. You can see some pics of our trip then by clicking HERE. In that post I also mention a place called Boonshoft where you might be able to can get a ZOO/MUSEUM membership deal for a great price ($79.00). I will be looking for a membership like that somewhere so we can get into the zoos at a discount as well.

We will definitely be looking into getting a membership through Boonshoft OR {update here} COYOTE POINT ($65 for a family& includes the Zoos/Science Museum Reciprocal Progam) later this year. I plan to homeschool the boys in the fall and I plan to make field trips a regular thing

Subscribe here to get my updates by email or RSS!  Subscribe now and find out where I get our next membership. Our McKinley membership (museums only) will expire this summer and I want one that covers Zoos & Aquariums  AND Science Museums. I’ll post about it later.

I don’t ever recall having heard about Uppercase Living until Ashley Varga, a rep from Uppercase Living, contacted me about reviewing the vinyl expressions  this company sells. The timing was perfect for me as I was in the middle of not knowing what to do with some of my wall space.  Uppercase Living had a perfect answer for one of my walls.  Ashley let me choose and sent me this expression to apply to my wall and I just love it. My husband likes it to. Upper Case has a thick catalog of  lots of expressions you can use not only on your walls but on glass  and smaller projects as well. Their website has video tutorials that are actually enjoyable to watch.

My chosen expression.

I have a narrow hallway and I was stumped about how to hang pictures. I wanted a look that made sense and was appealing. I picked out this expression and applied it to the center of the wall. I really like this expression “Each Day is a Gift”.  Isn’t it the truth! I plan to hang pictures around it. In fact I’ve already started.

Starting to hang pictures.

I just love this decorating idea! And they are running a buy 2 get 1 free special! I’ll tell you more about that in a bit.  But when you get yours, just be sure to follow the directions! There were a few times where the expression was sticking more to the paper than to my wall but it all worked out. Just follow the directions.  I think I had used soapy water to wash my wall and I shouldn’t have (think I forgot). My wall is plaster with trowling. It has these rainbow shaped lines in it basically so its textured. I don’t know if that was part of my problem in some spots  but once I got it on there (and its not hard)…I just applied more pressure to it.  Don’t get it wet. Anyways…watch the video tutorials. They are short and easy to watch.

Back to the special they are having.  You still have time, its been going on for awhile but between now and September 10th  you can buy any two items and get an additional item of equal or lesser value FREE.  And they are affordable…I’ve seen prices for $9.95 and up… I think I saw something about custom expressions where you pay per letter too. They have a really nice idea catalog for Fall/Winter 2009. I was also surprised to find out Ashley isn’t far from me. I think she said she saw my website listed on TuscMom.com so she can do a home show if I choose to go that route.

You can find out more about Uppercase Living by clicking here. Ashley also has a Fan Page on Facebook: Uppercase Living-Ashley Varga if you’d like to get updates there from her. Also note, her link/page on Uppercase Living is http://www.varga.uppercaseliving.net/Home.m  and must be typed in that way. Ashley also had this to share with me …

“on Sept. 15th we launch the Photo Prints line.  You upload any photo (high resolution) and we print it on vinyl that is removable and resuable.  The smallest is 2 feet x 2 feet, and they look really neat.   Something to keep in mind.  I also have a facebook page that updates the current specials and I have some new Uppercase photos on there-Uppercase Living Ashley Varga…”.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be looking into this some more. And Christmas is coming!