Mormon Battalion Museum – Old Town San Diego

While we were still staying at Grandma’s house we took a trip down to the Mormon Battalion exhibit in Old Town San Diego. It was actually quite impressive. They told a nice story about some of the battalion members and their family through an interactive video tour alongside some sister missionaries in prairie dresses. What was neat, was the paintings & pictures on the wall suddenly turned to the videos and started talking and telling their story. Ollie and Elora were really excited about it!

After the tour, there were some other activities. Above Oliver and Elora are playing a gold rush game.

After playing inside, the kids went outside to pan for gold. Elora was very excited about this. Oliver was just excited to dump water everywhere.

Here’s another girl at the exhibit who was giving Elora some tips on finding gold.

Oliver got bored of splashing in the water and decided to go make bricks. The exhibit informed us that when the Mormon Battalion finished their tour, they ended up in San Diego and were hired to make bricks for the town. They were the first people there to actually make bricks and helped build the whole town.

Next the kids decided to wash laundry. I can bet this would not be nearly so exciting if we actually had them wash their clothes like this at home. And can you imagine the conversations 150 years ago? “Some day kids will pretend to wash clothes like this for fun!!!”

Oliver was a big fan of the water pump.

Here’s our cute little superman. We stopped and got some salt water taffy in the old town square and after horking down his, Oliver ran off to play.

Meanwhile, Elora savored every last sticky bite of hers.

Then she joined Oliver on the cannon.

There’s something about cannons that just makes kids excited. Elora really loved them at this age too.

We got a ton of good photos of Oliver on the cannon. We really love this one because this face is the one he makes when he is very pleased with his situation and is having a good time while he thinks no one is watching.

Then the kids ran off to find the tree where Owl (from Winnie the Pooh) lives.

Oliver wanted to climb the tree. He really loves to climb trees, so we decided to take a portrait of him perched in the tree like a bird.

Here’s Elora’s inner-peace face. She’s very pleased because she got a new necklace with a bug inside of it. There was a little street market with arts and crafts and we told the kids they could each pick one thing out. Oliver got a necklace with a star fish.

Here’s the free picture we emailed to ourselves from the Battalion site. Surprisingly, the kids were all looking at the camera!