I was asked to participate in this “Out & About” 9×9 challenge by Daily Buzz Moms, where 9 bloggers will be sharing our adventures. All of the fun, excitement, memories and opinions expressed here are my own. You can see the entire series on Thursday, July 26th at DailyBuzz Moms!

As you know, in my promise to make this summer fun and memorable for my children, we have been going on weekly adventures. We actually have not had to go somewhere every single week because the girls have also done a few camps, so when it is an adventure week it is even more exciting. I know, totally genius, right? Mix in fun planned by other people with fun planned by me and who really needs an exciting vacation anyway? Certainly not this family!

Our latest adventure combined the fun of an outing with the endurance of a mini road-trip and added in the presence of some of our favorite friends to add the cherry on top of our summer sundae!

We decided to head down to Columbia, South Carolina to check out the children’s museum there, appropriately named “EdVenture”, which of course goes along so well with my completely made up in my own head ongoing theme of the summer.

Columbia, South Carolina is approximately two hours from my house which, fortunately for Abby, is about the length of one of her many, many available car DVDs. Unfortunately for the rest of us on the trip, she wasn’t really interested in the DVD choices as much as she was interested in asking how much longer until we got there about every couple mile markers or so. That certainly made the trip go quickly, as you could imagine!

We all arrived at EdVenture in one piece, ready to see what we could see. The girls were so excited because we had looked at the museum’s website ahead of time, and they knew that there was a giant statue of a boy inside that you could climb through. Somehow the size of this boy was not reflected as well on my computer screen as it turned out to be in real life, because wow, was he big. And by big, I mean, wow, was Abby scared. And by scared, I mean, wow, did she pretty much freak out upon entering the museum. Clearly, this was going to be a fun outing!

I managed to get her calmed down while Lucy and Emma quickly made their way through the forty foot tall boy aptly named “Eddie”. We then all got to explore the exhibit called “Body Detectives”, which had all kinds of hands-on (total pun intended) areas for learning about the human body. There was even a part where you could practice doing laparoscopic surgery, which was essentially like getting to play the game Operation without any annoying buzzing sounds. Needless to say, I could have stayed there all day perfectly my technique at successfully removing the pretend patient’s bread basket!

However, with three girls who were clamoring to see it all, my desire to be the world’s best simulated children’s museum surgeon was not going to be realized. Lisa also felt very strongly that we should have stayed longer at that exhibit, because she was enjoying using all of her medical school knowledge to win EVERY. SINGLE. ROUND. of the trivia game that we were playing. Yes, nothing says master of the children’s museum body trivia like a full-fledged doctor duking it out with two eight year-olds and a four year-old for the champion’s crown! Obviously, it was time to move on!

We made our way over to the grocery store, otherwise known as the “World of Work” exhibit. Lucy, Emma and Abby all enjoyed the opportunity to fill their carts with groceries and pretend to be the cashier, and I have to say the level of enthusiasm they showed made me wonder why I don’t enjoy grocery shopping more!

In the same exhibit area they also have a full-size fire engine as well as all the gear necessary to become a full-fledged firefighter, so Abby jumped on that opportunity. I think she was a little bummed out that they did not have a pink firesuit waiting for her, but she made the best of it, anyway!

We made our way to the second level, where we enjoyed the “Mission Imagination” exhibit, which allowed the girls to be on TV and have access to a music studio. Needless to say, this was a hit. I am only sorry (trust me when I say you are not) that I did not get a video of their musical medley.

We finished up the day at the “Blooming Butterflies” exhibit, which we had seen from the outside on our way into the museum. There were many rules to accompany our way into the butterfly area, including basically, don’t step anywhere there could be a butterfly, don’t freak out if one lands on you, don’t open the doors to leave the area until you are sure one has not landed on you, don’t attempt to touch the butterflies in any way, except of course if they are landing on you in which case they are touching you, not the other way around, but above all else, have fun! Seriously, though, it was really pretty amazing. The girls were enthralled with trying to count the butterflies they saw and then deciding whether or not they had seen the same one twice. It was the perfect way to end our day at “EdVenture”.

We had an uneventful drive back home, with everyone in the car declaring it a fantastic addition to our summer adventure series! I think the fact that we combined a fun outing with a mini road-trip made it all the more exciting and memorable! I would highly recommend this children’s museum (or honestly any children’s museum) as a place to visit if you are looking for a fun, summer outing.