Dinosaurs!! 9/13/08

Last weekend my sister was on babysitting duty while our brother and his wife were on a little holiday... So, we loaded their minivan up with all 5 - yes, five!! - kids on Saturday and headed to the Dinosaur Museum. Of course, Aunt Denice thought it would be really fun to get slushies at the Sonic before heading out to keep the kids happy on the drive to the next city south. We had to stop because Harlee needed lunch so why not, right? Here we are, the wild bunch in the car with Auntie at the wheel. Notice how large the cups are that all the children are holding? We will pay for that later, mark my words! But, Harlee was happy with her fries and chicken so it was well worth the stop. At one point when Harlee was double-fisting fries and wanting more faster than I could hand them to her, I thought she could be Erin's sister - she eats like her uncle Clint!

The museum is actually called the Museum of Ancient Life and is pretty cool because it is a hands-on learning museum. They have exhibits under glass and behind glass like all the other museums I've been to but they also have ones that you can touch and interact with and yes, even climb on! Of course the kids wanted to just run from each exhibit to the next and if we hadn't slowed them down for some photo ops we would have been done in about 40 minutes! Ironically, Denice and I had been discussing museum habits on the drive down and how we are kind of in the middle of the road between "I have to read everything at every exhibit" and "I just walk through and look at everything". Once inside with our crowd we found we wanted to read everything at all the exhibits and the kids were dragging US along.

The two favorites for the kids were the two places where they could REALLY get hands-on....

First at the erosion table where you can put on these lovely and stylish blue rubbery aprons and build stuff in the sand and water. They were really getting into it when the slushies from the drive down decided to rear their heads (again) and everyone had to rush for the restrooms. Of course, Bryn had been telling aunt Denice since we got inside that she had to 'go' even though we had hit the restroom after buying our tickets and before entering but we didn't really believe her. And it turns out we should have listened. Bryn, you have THE smallest bladder on the planet!!

After the detour we ran through the rest of the museum to end at the second favorite place... the Quarry! We spent quite a bit of time here and even Harlee got down and dirty in the sand after her stroller ride through the museum. It gave Denice and I a few minutes to catch our breath while the children were corralled like cattle and not interested in running in 4 different directions at once. There were two sand areas to dig bones in and at one point we thought it might be less crowded in the other one. Um... when you have five in your group and you take that group to the other side, then the other side is simply the crowded one now. It took us a minute to figure out that WE were the crowd and unless the kids split up they would just have to deal with it. Of course they are inseparable so that wasn't happening...

Here we are at the end... having conquered the "Dinosaur Museum"!