We were eating pizza at Sam and Louie’s-Two moms, 3 toddlers, 2 infants, and we were actually able to have a little conversation. And there was that light bulb moment. Why wasn’t these a Children’s museum?
For me that light bulb moment was finding a partner.
I had already lamented this when I was 7 months pregnant driving from Des Moines to Chicago and my husband turned to me and said, “That would be a nice project for you”.
What! A nice project? Opening a children’s museum would not be a project. It would be an immense undertaking. There was no way. I just needed to survive the next month where I needed to sell our house, buy a house, finish teaching for the year, help my two elementary kids handle the move, have our 4th baby girl, and move a week later.
But…a seed was planted. I’m so glad that I had lunch with Laura that day.
Laura here. Since taking my oldest to the Family Museum in Bettendorf, Iowa about four years ago, I wondered why we didn’t have something like it in Des Moines. We found and loved other children’s museums as we went on family trips around the Midwest, which made me wonder more and more: Why don’t we have this at home?
Around the time I met Julie I had been a stay at home mom for almost 5 years, and was starting to think about what I wanted to do as my 3 little girls got older. (If you’re counting, Julie and I have 7 daughters between us.) We were having lunch one day, and in between bites of pizza and interruptions from the kids, we talked about how we wished Des Moines had a children’s museum. The lightbulb moment happened for me when Julie said “Do you want to start one with me?”
I’m so glad I had lunch with Julie that day!