Pretend City

Well, my friends think I'm dumb for going here because it's so expensive. Pretend City is a new Children's Museum that opened up in Irvine, which is super close to us. It is pretty expensive (you even have to pay for infants), but they have a deal that if you go for the last hour, it's half price. We thought we'd try that out. I didn't know how it would be: maybe it would be way crowded, maybe it would be dumb, or a lot like the other ones we've been to for free...It was Uh-mazing with a capital U. I see why it costs so much to go there, because it has so many really cool things: they really pulled out all the stops. Such an awesome place for kids to imagine, and learn about how familiar things work. They took a chunk out of Max's imagination, and put it in this gigantic warehouse. There was a garden that had buried fruits and vegetables... with unlimited tools to tend to the garden...watering buckets, etc....this was at the farm
There was a construction site...actually, 2...this one was a bunch of PVC pipe that we could build things with, hard hats, tools, etc, etc.

The cars were of course Max's favorite part, and I'm pretty sure that he test drove every single car in the place...he just loves these things. What was really fun was that there are roads all over pretend city, street lights, stop signs, hills, etc...even a gas station...

There was a grocery store: a pretend Ralph's, with sooo many different foods and aisles, even a frozen foods section, a deli, a bakery, checkout stands, cash registers, etc... This is Max's concoction: a Peanut butter, cheese, tomatoe, jam, cheesecake sandwich...mmm. He used tongs to make his sandwich.

We met our cute little RSM girlie's there, Kali, Tatum and Amanda...didn't see them much, but here is Tatum picking apples from the orchard.

more grocery store...Max gathered groceries numerous times.

more driving: pink car, he couldn't wait to drive the one that was his favorite color...Brandy, you know that's exactly what he said! Another cool thing about pretend city was that there employees at every station sort of cleaning up as kids whirled through, so that when other kids got there, there were still apples to pick off the trees, vegetables in the garden, groceries to gather, fireman garb ready to be put on, and in their proper places. Other museums we have been to haven't really been like that. It was nice while following around a fast-moving-crazy guy to not have to totally worry about picking EVERYTHING up after him before he was out of my line of sight. Max was sooo kind, he was especially great at taking turns in the cars, which is a pretty hard thing for him to do right now. He had so much fun, and was soooo sad to leave when our hour was up...1 hour was NOT enough time to play here!

So, my review is: yes, it's expensive, but it's really, really cool.

The ONLY thing I was sad about, was that I had Ivy in the baby bjorn, so I couldn't dig in, and play with Max as much as I wanted...bending over with that thing is not my favorite. Anyway...Grandma, you really need to go here with us!