An early morning sword fight. How else do little boys say goodbye? :)

Welcome to the Kennedy Space Center. I think Alan was more excited than the kids were for this stop. :)

We’re sending them to the moon!

This was the kids’ favorite place – the plagyround! They loved it and kept asking to go back. The day would have been nicer (for me) if it wasn’t so cold and windy.

This is my trying to be happy face, after waiting in line for the tour bus for 30m and then waiting ON the bus for another 15m. Finally we started rolling!

Vehicle Assembly Building. There are so many cool facts about this building, but I don’t remember many. It’s the tallest single story building in the world, with the largest door in the world. The roof is so large you can put four football fields on it… I should let Alan do this post as I’m sure he remembers many more details than I do!

This is the launch pad. If I recall correctly it’s an active launch pad for Atlas V… launching soon, I think.

This is amazing! They put the shuttle on this “crawler” and transport it to the launch pad. This thing moves! It’s HUGE! Before the rocket launches this cralwer is filled with water (some insane amount) to help absorb some of the energy from the rockets. Right now people have to be 3 miles away from the launch pad, but without the water they’d have to be 6 (I think?) miles or more!

This is the road the crawler takes to the launch pad. This looks like two roads, but really it’s one road – the crawler is just that wide! It’s also a very special road designed to handled the weight of the crawler, which moves, I believe at about 2mph.

The stations below light up with each voice that you hear and the “windows” light up on launch!

I thought it was cool to see the huge check-list on the wall. Each step lit up as it was checked so you could see what was done and was to come.

The rockets from the Saturn V shuttle.

They had the whole things hanging from the ceiling, split into the stages of separation. It was pretty amazing. This is Stage 2.

Stage 3

The command module. This is where the astronauts sit.

They had an awesome re-enactment of landing on the moon. At the end the kids wanted to touch the moon too. :)

Afterwards they touched a REAL piece of the REAL moon! They were less impressed.

This is where the important people get to watch the launches. Kathy, have you been here?

Thumbs up for NASA!

Eve’s new friend.