Museum of Nature and Science- take 2

I accidentally hit something and poof it just posted like that. With nothing on it.

Monday we went to the Museum of Nature and Science. I know it is 2 hrs away and gas is horrible but I've been there enough this yr to think about getting a membership. It is always educational and the kids like the exhibits and the Imax movies.


This time we went for the "Gold Exhibit", a "Behind the scenes" look with zoologist of invertabrates and the Imax film "the alps". What a day. Again we were gone for 12 hrs. It seems always to be this way but that's okay.

The first thing we did was just wandering around the museum. Did you know that the guy who painted all the mureals hid pictures among them. They are everywhere and mostly elves, although there is Star Wars hidden in the Imax waiting area. It was fun trying to find the elves some of which you could only see their heads. One was the only ceramic figure in the entire Museum. We didn't find them all because we ran out of time, we had to head over to the "Behind the scenes talk with the zoologist of Invertabrates".

They had displays of all sorts of spiders, mostly specimens but there were a couple of live ones. Austin was the only one brave enough to hold the trantula, at which point he asked if he can have one. One guess as to my answer. Then it was on to the auditorium. We didn't acutally get to go into the lab but they set up cameras there and we sat in the auditorium listening to the research they do. It was an interesting talk and we learned alot. At the end of the talk we were allowed to ask questions. Austin and Colin went up. Austin gave up about 10 min. in. Colin stuck it through and asked- "Are crabs spiders?" No they are not, contrary to what my sister said. they are in the same group somewhere in those orders we learned about in biology. YOu know spieces, phylum, class ect.. But the crabs are then seperated into another group from spiders all together, the things they share are outer skeletens .Then he asked something my mom told me once and has since creeped me out. -"Do you eat spiders at night?" The good doctor said this is a myth. Spiders have no reason to crawl into your mouth at night. Therefore you can not be tickled by them and inadvertantly eat them. Gross. I breathe a sigh of relief, I feel much better now. The doctor should know since she studied them and got her PHD in arachnids. Wait till I tell my mom.

Then we went on to the Imax film- The Alps. It was great. It's about this man whose father died trying to climb one of the mountains in the Alps. He was about 9-12 yrs old. He is now married and has a daughter the same age and guess what wants to climb the same said mountain. Hmmm. So its the story following him and the hike to the music of Queen(chris was impressed). It was interesting and the veiw of the Alps is amazing. I actually want to buy the video.

It was now lunch and we went to the Denver Mint to get some more coins. We got the new state quarter, New Mexico it had come out just that day. I got Chris his presidental dollars. Then it was back to the museum and lunch.

After all this we went to the Gold exhibit. There was alot of gold in the exhibit and it took us about 2 hrs to get through it. They had the original gold coins used thousands of yrs ago and history of the first monies used. We had just studied money so it was neat to see some of the pieces up close. There was a gold room. It was the equivalent of a penny made in gold spread around a room. It covered all the walls and I think it was 3oz. worth of gold. It showed just how pliable gold is and how thin you can get it. There was the gold rush and short videos on the life of a miner, not good or long(miner's lives). Gold is used in every civilization and has been for thousands of yrs. Today the biggest miner of Gold is South Africa, I believe it was something like they produce 70% of the worlds gold. The conditions for these miners is said to be about the same as the early miners of the USA. It 's heartbraking.

After all this we of course hit both gift shops. There is always one set up at the exhibit surounding the theme and the main one. Then we headed to the car. I had been wearing a pedometer all day and after getting on the highway I looked down and it said I had walked a whopping 150 steps. Wait that can't be right I was at the musuem all day. I also remember looking down at one point and it being in the thousands range. This particular pedometer has a big reset button, so when I hug my children who are just the right size to accidently hit the reset button I loose my steps. Luckily conner had worn one too and I just looked at his steps- 13000 or so.

We hit rush hour and it took longer to get home so we stopped off at Panda Express in the springs, otherwise my poor babies wouldn't eat till 8:00 at night. We got home about that time too and I hit the bed, I was exhausted. It was a good day.