Fitness First Friday at the Magic House

(For those who are not local, some back story: there is this child-centric, totally hands on "museum" in St Louis that we have always liked. The first time that Anny or I had been there was ten years ago for a wedding - the whole place was filled with craziness of adults on a Saturday night having a blast doing a bunch of stuff designed for kids! What fun.

More specifically, I should say, The Magic House is in Kirkwood, MO. Hey, we live in Kirkwood, MO. As it turns out, our apartment is only two turns away in the car from there! For Christmas we got (and gave) a year long membership! If you do the whole "x number of visits this pays for itself" deal - I think a month into 2011 we may have already doubled down on it! Abby loves it there, and asks to go each time we pass it!)

I made a funny offer to Abby yesterday morning -

"Abby, I was thinking we could go to The Magic House after dinner. If we go, our trip tonight will be to go and learn and not just play with everything along the way. How does that sound?"

I totally should not have made that offer in that way, but we skipped out on the (first) Fitness First Friday last month and I didn't realize that ALL of that learning would be so much fun! The program is designed around taking 1,000 steps in an evening by sending us upstairs first, then all the way to the basement. (250 steps) From there we made a first stop with some kid's yoga! Abby had a blast, and got compliments from the instructor about how good her poses are!

Then we took off to the other side of the building (it said another 250 steps, but I think those are Rob-steps, so Abby did even more) to go up to the third floor again. We did some of the fun stuff because I could not bring myself to keep her from playing - that IS what the Magic House is all about! The next task she skipped - going down a three story twisty slide. The guy at the bottom of the stairs told me I could go with her, but the lady at the top told me I could not. We walked down. More exercise than fun, I guess!

We walked down to the lower level again after doing a little math - which is just counting for Abby. (250 more steps) We went into one of the classrooms, which we had never been in before. In there Abby did a really good workout - about three minutes of Zumba for Kids led by a few folks from the local YMCA. Abby had SO much fun, and got to learn a new dance! She did really well at following direction, and came out saying "daddy, dance is exercise and exercise is healthy!" Win!

From there we we sent back up the stairs - I think we might have walked 400 of our 1,000 steps ON the stairs - through half of the building and past Abby's favorite parts to one last stop. (250 steps) In there they had what they called recess - lots of jumping around and some running. Abby loved playing with the other kids that followed at about the same pace around the museum that we did.

Wait - that was 1,000 steps just like that! Throw in the extra exercising that Abby did with the dancing, recess and yoga and that little girl had as much exercise as I do in a whole day, wrapped up in about 90 minutes! As a reward for getting all four stickers done for each 250 step Abby got a free Apple Fries at the in-house cafe! Without prompting Abby declared "apples are a healthy snack, Daddy!"

She gets it. I need to learn from her. She and I agreed on he way home that we are going to start dancing more at home for exercise during the cold months. She might be the key to changing me, and that is brilliant!