Museum Pass

Our community library provides families with opportunities to visit local museums and the zoo free of charge. Inside the door of the library there is stand with a series of yellow cards that you can check out for a week. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to find the popular ones available (believe me, I look for the zoo card every time I'm there and have yet to see it). 

About a month ago, though, I found a pass to the Natural History Museum...which sounded cool so I took it! The following Saturday the three of us spent a couple of hours exploring. We introduced the babes to:

• Dinosaurs (let's be honest; any museum with dinosaurs is totally worth an afternoon!)

The dinosaurs exhibited were models but they did have one ginormous and REAL bone that we could touch. How many 21st century four-month-olds can say they've sat on a dinosaur? 

(And yes, we succombed to the temptation to "feed" Mads to the dinosaurs. What can I say?)

We also saw:

• Other prehistoric things of difficult definement

• The old territorial jail, which was very cool. The museum itself  used to be the jailhouse - they've left the old cells exactly as they were. Apparently the inmates weren't allowed pillows or bedding. I wouldn't have fancied sleeping on the hard steel beds... four squeezed in a cell the size of a small walk-in closet.

We laughed at these odd labels:

(Watch out all ye collectors of ancient artifacts...the AZ Natural History Museum will be showing up to collect your generous "donation" soon...)

They had an interesting NASA Space Station exhibit and I would have loved to spend more time there, but the babes was missing her nap-time.

So we hurried through one last activity - what Dave dubbed the "rocking chair-odactyl" (isn't my husband cool?).

And I caught this beauty before we headed home: