Guest Blog: Dinosaurs and Ice Cream by Drama Queen

Crafty has been running around like crazy trying to get her summer classes finished up.  She is such a smarty-pants that she is working to get her Associate's degree by high school graduation.  It's a ton of work, and so while everyone else is relaxing (or rather, going back to school and having football try-outs), she's been working her tookus off to get as many points in as she can before finals week.  So yesterday we did some extra credit!  BabyDoll, Crafty, and I all ran down to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. 

Taking lots of notes!

I've never been down there on a typical week day, so I was surprised by how quiet it was.  We had lots of opportunity to check out all the different exhibits.  First we went to the Discovery Room which is a rotating exhibit.  This week it was all about simple machines.  It was cool to have the room mostly to ourselves, but quite a few of the items were not functioning.  BabyDoll did enjoy seeing how a simple engine works from the inside.  She has so much curiosity. 

Drama Queen would not make a good archeologist...

My personal favorite part was walking through the tunnel of 'stars' to show how we were going back in time.  We had fun playing 'spot the cephalopod' and took some time trying to decide if we would rather have a pet trilobite or a crinoid garden.  Crafty determined that the reason most people at least remember what a trilobite is stems from the fact that the average person's brain only pays attention through the Cambrian time period before wondering where the big dinosaurs are.  I personally like all the ichthyosaurs - see that vocabulary! -  but BabyDoll was ready to move on. 

With the dinosaurs, we had to determine why they were all posed as they were, so I showed Baby Doll the difference between sharp, pointy teeth and large flat molars.  Armed with that knowledge we were able to definitively determine which dinos were going to get eaten. 

BabyDoll made her very own dinosaur!

Talking about dinos getting eaten made us realize that we were getting hungry ourselves, and with our phones starting to die, we zoomed a little faster once we hit the other side of the KT boundary.  We said hello to the saber tooth cats and made sure to pose by the ginormous shark, but really we were focused on the coupons we had been given for free ice cream cones! 

That Finals Week Feeling...

We are just so cute.

All told, it was a pretty fun way to spend an afternoon.  I think it was pretty pricey for just extra credit, but thankfully Momma paid for this time.  Thanks for letting me and BabyDoll go too!