The gift that keeps on giving.

One of the things we gave Bud for his fifth birthday was a trip to the nearest big city museum.   The kids and I had never been before, and Hockey Guy hadn’t been for over twenty years.  We took Hockey Guy’s parents along for the fun and made a big day out of it.

This guy was the biggest reason we went.  Bud and Monkey were both really looking forward to seeing the cast T-Rex skeleton.  They have both been into dinosaurs for awhile now and talked all the time of going to see the dinosaur skeletons at the museum.  They were both in awe of this guy.  I found it hilarious that a T Rex’s arms were about the same size as a child’s arms, but a child could have easily fit into that rib cage.  Or that mouth.  Yikes.

  

One of the things I noticed about the museum, on top of all the amazing galleries they have and the fact that their mummy still has all his toes, was that there were tons of little things kids would find fascinating.  Bud quickly discovered all the drawers in the bird section and spent a good twenty minutes going through each one to see the different eggs, nests, and types of food birds make and eat, plus about a million other things.  There were drawers, doors, tunnels, caves, and other interactive displays throughout the entire museum.  That is a definite plus for any family with young kids they are trying to keep interested.

Even Sweet Pea got in on the action.  Here she is admiring a stuffed bird in that glass case.  She toddled around (holding on to something at all times) and looked in the cases, drawers, and doors she could reach.  She enjoyed crawling through the tunnels and seeing the fish in the big fish tank.  We brought a big double jogging stroller and she spent most of her time just admiring all the sights and sounds from the comfort of her own little seat.

The best part of the trip, though- at least according to the boys- was the Children’s Discovery Center.  There they did a bunch of really fun things, like made rubbings of insects…..

… read books inside a life-sized tee-pee (please ignore the rooster tails on both my boys, we obviously haven’t cut their hair recently)…

… dress up in fun outfits like kimonos and suits of armor (complete with chain mail hood and metal helmet, but that picture didn’t turn out)…

 

… and digging for dinosaur fossils in the sand- the favorite by far.   We spent a great deal of time in the Discovery Center.  Other big favorites with the kids were the bat cave, the mummy, the canoes in the First Peoples’ Gallery, looking for all the (fake) animals in the Biodiversity Gallery, laying on a giant map of Egypt, seeing the hundreds of different rocks and minerals, and looking through a giant magnifying glass.

So the trip was a major success.  The kids had a good time, the in-laws had a good time, and the mommy and daddy had a good time.  Can’t beat that. 

We loved it so much, we got a family pass for a year (which was less than the cost of two normal trips), so we can go again and again!  

~ by Krista on April 20, 2009.