Night at the Museum

Okay, actually it was an afternoon at the museum, but I thought that would be a fun title.

Yesterday after my Women at the Well rehearsal, we went with Jeff's sister Joy and her family to the Utah Museum of Natural History. We had a really good time there, looking at all the exhibits, letting the kids explore a bit, and spending time with family.

I don't want to do a big, long post with a bunch of writing, so I'll just post some pictures of the stuff we saw and did.

Here's Zaylee (and cousin Marilee in the background) at the dinosaur "dig," where the kids get to use brushes to wipe sand off dinosaur bones.


Sorry for the blur, the museum doesn't allow flash, and the lighting wasn't all that great. All the pictures I took of the kids turned out like this or worse, so this is the only one I'm posting.

Next is one of the displays in anthropology. These are some of the tools that ancient people used in their everyday life.


Next up is the drawer of shoes. In a small corner of the anthropology department, there are three drawers you can pull out and look at real ancient shoes under glass. These were the moccasins of early American Indians. I mainly am mentioning this because of the smell. When you open the drawers you get this enormous whiff of centuries-old foot odor - whew!!! Still, it's a neat display.


After the rock gallery (where we saw a quartz three times the size of Zaylee's head and an enormous variety of minerals and stones of various sizes, shapes, and colors) we headed into the bug gallery. Zaylee and Thomas were particularly fascinated with this part of the museum, as they got to see triops and ants and beetles and all manner of creepy crawlies. My personal favorite was the tarantula.


Friendly-looking little guy, isn't he? He was hiding in a dark burrow at the bottom of his case, and there's a button to press to turn on the light so you can see him. Jeff's niece Jaime let out a yelp every time she saw the tarantula (she's 10, or 11?). At several inches in length, I have to admit he was a bit yelp-inspiring and I let out a gasp when I first saw him too!

Next up was the "zoo" of the museum, where there are a variety of taxidermied animals. Like this wolf:


I had fun taking this picture, trying to get a good close angle. I wish there wasn't a glare from the glass case, it would have been much more realistic looking!

The last display room housed the dinosaur bones. Here's a mother dinosaur standing guard over her nest.


We finished up the tour by creating earthquakes (there's a place on the floor where you jump and it records it on a seismograph. Joy's husband Jim made the biggest "earthquake" - he's got quite a jump!), looking at a 3-D topography map of the area (complete with those goofy red and blue 3-D glasses), and wandering around the gift shop. Jeff and I, of course, didn't buy anything because we're ultra cheap, but if we weren't saving money there was an awesome Native American cradle that I would have loved to get, for only $200! lol...

After that we had to call it a day. Jeff and I had talks to write (we spoke in Church today) and soup to make (we had a linger-longer after Church today). I got my talk written, but I had a killer migraine due to having spent the afternoon walking around. So my talk was kind of short - I made it as long as I could before I simply had to stop from the pain.

About the linger-longer: We made turkey vegetable soup. The broth was homemade, from when we simmered our turkey carcass for two days, and there were potatoes and carrots and celery and onion and cabbage and barley, and of course turkey. It was so delicious! At the linger-longer there were a beautiful array of homemade soups. I'm sad I only got to try three or four of them. But they were sure good!

Now it's time for dinner, I think we'll have soup...