Day trip to Ballenberg

On Friday we took our first day trip with Rachel McKeehan and her two daughters, which are roughly Sydney and Hailey's age.  They have been here 4 years and were kind enough to invite us to Ballenberg about 2 hours away.  The drive was absolutely beautiful and the kids were great on the drive.  We drove north through Bern toward Lucerne.  Once there we had a picnic lunch before heading in and checking it out.  Ballenberg is a huge open air museum with over 100 century old buildings, farm animals, and hands on activities.  I was a little surprised to see how interested the kids were in all the buildings and exploring them from top to bottom.  Hopefully this is a great first step towards opening their eyes to museums.

Girls at the first house eager to explore the inside.

Kids standing by large bells.

Hailey giving the water pump a try.  Oddly enough no one fell in!

Kids hammering nails into different kinds of wood.

Aaron next to the big oxen.

Aaron working  on getting his nail all the way in.  He could have stayed there all day.

Now onto wood carving and no one cut themself.

House with toys!!  Aaron loved the marble run and girls gave the stilts a try.

I had to give it a go since I used to walk around on them all the time as a kid with a pair my dad built for me.

Sydney finally got it and her faces says it all!!

Building with cow bells and mountain in background.

Beautiful view with waterfall.

Playground area for kids and bowling, which Aaron loved.

There was a separate area for the kids to go in with the goats.

My attempt to distract Hailey from her pouting by taking a picture.  This was on our way out so everyone was getting pretty tired.

Picture as we were walking through the woods back to the car.  The trees were huge!!!

Another beautiful picture of the countryside.

It was a great day and everyone was wiped out on the way home after we did a lot of walking and going up and down stairs.