NASA

This day can be summed up with the two most famous NASA quotes.  "Houston, we have a problem."  The weather attempted to ruin our day by pouring buckets of rain, but "Failure is not an option," carried the day.  We took our party indoors.  Granny and Gramps took us to the Houston Space Center for the day.  While it seems much of NASA's glory days are historical, it still reveals a strikingly modern contrast to the primitive nature of the state parks. 

The kids were floored by the 3 story indoor playground and would have happily lived there for eternity had we allowed it, but we wanted to learn some things before recess.  First we stood in a small room and watched an early rocket launch video with impressively loud audio and accompanying "smoke" on cue for ambiance.  The kids thought that was pretty cool.

The next video was in an amphitheater and covered the history of NASA.  Norah and Justin were captivated.  It began with exciting loud music, but after steady progress and numerous milestones of space exploration the story met the now infamous sight of the last Space Shuttle Challenger launch.  The music continued as the shuttle dramatically lifted off into cheers of the crowd until the communication, "Roger, going throttle up."  The music instantly halted with a pop, a flash of flames, a poof of smoke and criss-crossing rocket boosters .  There was total silence except for audio of mission control's solemn attempts to re-establish communication with the shuttle.  From the silence, Justin loudly questioned with concern "Daddy, what happened to the space ship?  Did the astronauts die?"  It's remarkable how an event so far removed from today will always stir emotion.

Of course, new music continued hopefully as the space program was restored and the country looked to continue pushing the edge into the future.  Today's times host a disappointing contrast to the space program of the past decades.  Once the source of incredible National pride, it's now an afterthought, pushed off for big business and foreign entities to explore and exploit as the US seems to willingly surrender its leadership role due to overwhelming public apathy.  Forgive the tangent.

The playground was the kids' favorite part of the day as they climbed through the 3-story structure, throwing colorful balls and feeding them into launchers.  Justin easily scrambled up throughout the structure, but Norah is not a big fan of heights.  Eventually Daddy got in with her and alternated pushing and dragging her to the top where she was happy to share a ride with me down the longest, twistiest slide ever.  They could have easily entertained themselves for half a day or more, but as the rain cleared we saw an opportunity.

We took the tram tour through a very chilly, but light rain.  We wrapped the kids up within our arms as little wind gusts intermittently sprayed us with water while we toured the testing area, then the rocket park.  A very long building housed a full scale Saturn V rocket, which easily dwarfed us.  We circled it a couple times as the kids pointed and asked many excited questions.  Throughout our tour of the Houston Space Center, Justin felt overwhelmingly disappointed that none of the spacecraft had rockets or ion canons, proton torpedoes, or any form of weaponry.  Additionally, Norah would have preferred a fancier color palette than black, white and gray, but both kids thoroughly enjoyed the day. 

Norah and Justin marveled at the sight of real pieces of the moon, astronaut suits, and genuine spacecraft.  At times it seemed they couldn't be listening, but evidently they were just in deep thought because after a moment they would run excitedly to Granny and Gramps and explain the function of every part of the spacecraft.  Despite a few little disappointments and inconveniences, we were thrilled to observe something in our kids that is so rare to find in everyday adult life:  Pure, Unadulterated Wonder.