I wasn’t sure if the kids were too young to enjoy much at Virginia Living Museum in Newport News, but turns out, they offer things for a wide variety of ages!  These two cousins enjoyed looking at the animals, playing zookeeper, and snoozing in the planetarium.  We originally went because they have a dinosaur exhibit, but we barely spent 20 minutes in there!These stations had where the child could choose which video they wanted to watch to learn about zookeepers and animals.  Hazel was totally engrossed in it!And her slow self insisted on climbing the stairs by herself every. single. time.The only other time I’d ever been to the museum it was raining so we didn’t get to see the outside portion.  We still didn’t see all of it this time, since we had two year olds & spent a fair amount of time in the zookeeper play area.Oh hey– there I am!  See? Sometimes I’ll pass the camera off and pretend I’m part of the vacation, too!  😉I love how Virginia Living Museum has so many interactive areas for kids to touch and feel things!  It makes the whole experience fantastic for them.  My mom is an elementary school teacher, too, so herding kids around to discover new things is her specialty.More than anything else, this area was Hazel’s very favorite.  She loves to play doctor at home, and enjoyed playing with the animals as well!  They had half of the area set up like a kitchen that the keepers prepare the animals food in.  The other half is a vet office where each of the “sick” animals have their own kennel area and it shows the kids what each animal needs to eat & they can bandage them up, check their heartbeat, etc.  They even have an x-ray viewing area that the kids can put the different animal x-rays up to look at, and a microscope area!  As a parent I was wildly impressed & wanted to play with all of it myself!And… there’s always time for another tickle fight!On their last morning here we headed out to Buckroe Beach one last time to let the kids play.Needless to say, having family in town was a blast!  I have a feeling it will only get more fun as the kids get older!