George W. Bush Presidential Library

While in Texas, we made a special trip to Dallas to visit the new George W. Bush Presidential Library. Back in 2011 we visited the Ronald Reagan Library in Californai and it sparked an interest. Now I'd love to take our boys to all  thirteen of the existing Presidential Libraries.

For this field trip I took Hunter, Connor, Carter and Holden while Todd kept Collins and Colton. The boys really enjoyed it and took advantage of the many interactive parts of the library/ museum. As a bonus, we got to see my sweet friend Sarah Smith plus her hubby Wyatt and kids. I loved getting to see their family!

Here we are ready to enter the museum. *The auto focus is broken on my camera so if some of the photos are a bit fuzzy, it is simply because I am not a good photographer.

Notice how Carter is trying to smile at me and yet creep his hand up to do bunny ears on Connor.

Pieces of steel beams from one of the World Trade Center buildings. The 9/11 exhibit in the museum was fascinating!

Connor and Carter in the Rose Garden. The Presidential Library had an exact replica of the Oval Office as it looked during Bush's years in White House, and just off of the Oval Office was a Texas Rose Garden.

On the ceiling of the Oval Office.

Here we were waiting for our turn to sit at the replica of the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. Nice face Hunter!

Still waiting...

OK, these next three photos have awful lighting, but each of the boys got a chance to sit at the president's desk and even pick up the phone.

Can you believe this picture (with none of the boys in the chair) turned out the best? Rats!

The President and the First Lady's jackets from Air Force One.

This was maybe the favorite thing that the boys did all day. This table was amazing! Picture the cool computers that you see on shows like CSI where the detectives are swiping photos across a screen, touching photos/ maps/ articles to enlarge them, etc. The boys spent a lot of time in this "Defending Freedom" section. The interactive video table featured photos, documents and maps related to Iraq and Afghanistan.

This exhibit was probably a bit over the boys' heads, but I really liked it. It allowed guests to put themselves in Bush's place and make big decisions on topics such as Hurricane Katrina, Saddam Hussein and more.

Before we left, we took a few photos of these larger than life statues of George Bush and George W. Bush.

This was a fun field trip with my boys. So glad we had a chance to do the Bush Presidential Library!