Dinosaur Bones!

We had planned to go the aquarium in SLC on Saturday for my birthday, but after talking to a few people who said it wasn't that great and it wasn't that big and kinda pricey to get in, we didn't really want to take our chances on it. Instead we went to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving point. It was only $1 a person more to get in, and we'd already been once two years ago, so we knew it was worth the price.

This year Thanksgiving Point has cool light exhibit called NASA Blast. They have all these really cool set ups that teach about light, and how most of what we know about space we discovered by watching how light behaves in space (bouncing off things, reflecting off of things, etc.) Every station in this exhibit was hands on. We got arrange tiles over a white light and see how they reflected in a mirror, be got to use mirrors and filters to bounce light around, we wore cool color filter glasses while looking at pictures, and saw of the different filters completely changed the way the photographs looked. But the very coolest thing was the shadow room. We went into a dark tent, and stood up against a white screen, then we pushed a button that turned on a light for about 3 seconds, the we moved away. Turns out the screen was glow-in-the-dark, and after the light went off and we moved the screen glowed everywhere except where our shadows were. It was so cool! And we had a lot of fun playing with it.

After the NASA Blast exhibit, we went on to the normal Museum of Ancient Life. I love this museum, I think it's so well done. They've made it informative and interesting enough for adults/older kids, who want to learn the facts, but they've also done a really nice job of strategically placing a lot of hands on things for the younger kids. A very family oriented environment.

Here's Aaron and the kids. We have a pretty good lookin' family if you ask me.

When I asked Lincoln this morning if he wanted to go to the dinosaur museum he said no. I asked him why, and he said, "because all the dinosaur bones are scared of me." I thought that was funny.

The boys had so much fun looking at the dinosaurs. But I think they liked the hands on stuff even better. In my opinion the erosion table is the coolest part of the whole museum, especially for the kids (and Aaron). I think we spent a whole hour in there. Basically it's a giant sand and water table. There is sand all over on the inside of the table, and then every so often a water spickett is sticking up, with water coming out of it slowly. The idea is to build a big island or sand structure of some sort (you are provided with plastic trees and dinosaurs to decorate with) and then you watch as the water slowly erodes away whatever it is that you built. This go around, Aaron and the boys tried really hard to make river beds. There was a big poster up on the wall that explained how deep canyons are formed when the water doesn't have any where to go, so the river bed gets deeper and deeper until there's are steep canyon walls for banks. I don't know if this poster inspired Aaron or not, but that's basically what he and the boys were trying to do. They'd dam up the water while they made a path for the river to flow, and then when they were ready they'd knock the dam out really fast, and the water would come rushing in and follow the path the boys had made for it. Lincoln was really interested in how the strong current of the water would pull his plastic dinosaur along. Ivan really liked decorating the banks of the river with plastic trees. A few of the other kids that were there got in on the action too. You just can't resist Aaron when he's on a roll. :) We had to leave the erosion table once Ivan started eating sand. Not very tasty Ivan.

Adelia was really good for the most part. She sat happily in her stroller. We did get her out a few times so she could look around, or be in a few pictures. I thought she'd take a nap in her stroller, but she didn't want to miss out on the action. She was wide eyed and bushy tailed the whole time. Oh ya, and slobbery.

We saw a lot more cool things. There was a Build-A-Dino room, where there was a giant dino body in the middle of the room, and then stuck to the walls with Velcro were various arms, legs, heads, tails, spikes, horns, attachments, etc. and you could choose whichever ones you wanted and create your very own dinosaur by velcroing all the pieces onto the body. The kids had fun with this too.

The boys were a bit afraid of the the giant shark. They would not turn their backs to it for a picture until Aaron went over and sat with them. I don't blame them one bit, I think that shark could swallow all of us in one bite.

Two years ago when we came for my birthday, I was 8 and a half months pregnant with Ivan. I thought this egg was the funniest thing in the world, because it was about the same size and shape as my belly, so I looked as if I had swallowed something similar. So this go around, Aaron wanted me to do a picture of the egg with me and Ivan in it. I'm so glad Ivan is not still in my tummy.

The last exhibit before you leave the museum is a giant sandbox. The kids get paint brushes and they get to go find the dinosaur bones that are buried underneath the sand. Whoever came up with this idea was a freakin' genius. This is something I would have LOVED as a kid! My kids enjoyed it also, although I think Ivan was a bit more into it than Linc was.

We had such a wonderful day. I never regret doing fun things together as a family. I'm glad we chose to go to the dinosaur museum instead of the aquarium, I think dinosaurs are more up my kids' alley anyways, they aren't big animal lovers. We can always go see the fish at Wal-Mart for free. :)

Happy Birthday to me!