A morning at the Henry Ford Museum

On Monday, admission at the Henry Ford museum was free (a $40 value! ;D) and I'd heard such great things about it that we had to check it out! 

They have what ends up being a fantastic Americana collection, with lots of one-of-a-kind artifacts that were really awesome to see. Also, we just really love museums, so it was kind of obvious that we'd have a great time :D

We started out at the airplanes, which made Jesse's face light up like that of a small boy: 

That boyish gleam in his eye is my favorite!

We briefly meandered over to the historic cars section (Dad, you would have swooned at their awesome collection! :D) 

before heading over to their awesome display on Liberty and Justice. This exhibit had 4 parts: the American revolution, slavery and the civil war, women's suffrage and the civil rights movement.

In the civil rights section, they have the actual bus that Rosa Parks rode on! It was Martin Luther King day when we went, and I'll admit, seeing this piece of history definitely made me get a little choked up. Thanks for being so brave, Rosa!

Nikolai obviously didn't know what was going on, but he did like seeing a big bus!

Also, I realized while we were there that I've posted approximately 0 pictures of myself this pregnancy, so I made Jesse take one of me in all my 33 1/2 weeks pregnant glory (aka very round, but not huge just yet):

Jesse, for his part, really enjoyed standing on the bus and listening to the story of Rosa Parks. 

I really enjoyed the women's suffrage exhibit (though I didn't get to read that much--toddlers and museums make that kind of thing difficult!) and was, again, moved to tears thinking about the women who dared to suggest that women could vote. (Alright, perhaps I was feeling a bit hormonal that day, but it was cool, ok? :D)

One of my favorite parts of the museum was the Dymaxion house--a forward thinking, "environmentally friendly" (at least, it certainly seemed to them like that at the time!) aluminum house that was supposed to be the house of the future (please do me a favor and read that in a dramatic voice, ok?).

It was designed to be not only space efficient, but had cool features like ventilated floors (the windows were plexiglass) for air circulation, channels that would collect rainwater and use it for household water consumption (probably for washing and stuff like that? I don't actually know) among other cool things.

The coolest room was one we couldn't walk in, because it has the original 1946 floors and they don't want them ruined! 

An added benefit of being there on MLK day was this pair of performers, who sang some songs about "love and peace" from artists like Marvin Gaye, etc. We only got to listen to them for about 3 songs (the length of a 3 year old's attention span) but I really enjoyed them!

Another interesting artifact: the limousine John F. Kennedy was assassinated in:

(They also had the limo Reagan was shot at in, as well as the chair Lincoln was assassinated in at Ford's theater. Sort of a morbid collection, but definitely priceless and interesting to see!)

They also had a fun train section, of which my favorite part was these carriage cars: they're really carriages! 

(Aaron, my train-loving brother: was this a thing?!)

Niko's favorite part was the massive model train set, with the only problem being that we wouldn't let him hop the fence to go play with them! Poor lad ;)

All in all, it was an awesome morning, and, unsurprisingly, we found ourselves in love with another museum! If you ever find yourself in Dearborn, MI, check it out!