And now onto business! For those of you who didn't know, the boys won a contest titled "Why Space Matters" through the Coalition for Space Exploration. We submitted a two minute video showing why space matters to our boys (you can view our entry here) and we were selected as one of three winners. Our prize was an all expenses paid trip to Space Center Houston and NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas! It just so happened that NASA was launching the Soyuz 35 mission out of Kazakhstan on May 28th and the Coalition for Space Exploration was gracious enough to help us plan our grand prize trip around this date in hopes that the boys could see the launch!
I can begin by saying that the trip was above and beyond our wildest dreams. We expected nothing more than the bare essentials of our travel and tickets to explore the space center. But what we got was the result of at least a dozen different people who put their hearts and souls into making the dreams of two little space loving boys come true. We stayed in a beautiful hotel suite that had plenty of room for all four of us to take up residence for four days and we had two amazingly awesome days at Space Center Houston and the Johnson Space Center where they rolled out the red carpet every time we stepped foot on the campus. The boys were treated like royalty! Literally everyone knew who they were and were so excited to meet them! I'll chronicle each of our four days so that you can get a glimpse of the magic we experienced- I apologize if it is long, but this is our way of documenting the entire experience for the boys so that it is something they truly never, ever forget and I want to have every last detail written down for them.
So our first day started with our 11:30am flight out of Detroit. We had a layover in Chicago but didn't have to switch planes. As always, the boys were fantastic little travelers. These two flights brought their grand total up to 13 plane rides... pretty impressive for a couple of three year olds! The head flight attendant was quite smitten with the boys- she asked the captain if they could come in to the cock-pit and she also allowed them to help demonstrate how to use the life jackets on board, as she became quite familiar with Matthew's intense level of concern regarding the floating plane picture in the safety manual! (Please see Day 4!)
When we arrived in Houston, we headed straight down to Galveston for dinner at a place Jon had found called Shrimp 'n Stuff. It was a little outdoor hole in the wall local place that was supposed to be fantastic and it didn't disappoint! We had coconut shrimp and crab balls for dinner (luckily Jon didn't go into anaphylactic shock!) and after an unsuccessful attempt to suffer through the traffic headed to the beach we aborted our mission and just headed back to check into our hotel. Despite our marathon day, it was gosh darn near impossible to get them to sleep. I think it was 10:00pm Houston time which was really 11:00pm our time before Jon finally pinned them down (quite literally!) and got them to fall asleep.
Leaving Detroit Metro
Waiting or our plane to come in
On board and ready to fly!!!
Maybe he'll be a pilot someday :)
Modeling the safety features of the plane
Dinner in Galveston- Yum!
At our hotel :)
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