Dino adventure

I always have the best of intentions when I plan outings for my family! Today was no different. I was excited to take Maddie and Charlotte to the Dinosaur Trail at Durham's life and science museum. I spent the summer listening to commercials on the radio talking about how cool the Dinosaur Trail was and I wanted to check it out. I decided that we should pick Maddie up from preschool and blow off nap time and head straight up to Durham. (40 min. drive) That was a mistake. Apparently Maddie is not ready to skip nap time on school days. Charlotte decided that 30 minutes was all the nap she needed this morning so she was in rare form as well. I do not take the blame for that! :) Both girls had a terrible time listening, Maddie threw not one, but two temper tantrums where she cried and screamed and forced Dan to remove her from the situation and carry her. Charlotte kept accidentally hitting herself on the forehead with her sippy cup which caused her to have a fit and cry. By the end of our 2 hour visit to the museum I was in a horrible mood and ready to go home.

Except we didn't go home.....we decided to stop and get dinner at Mimi's Cafe. Another mistake. My kids are good in restaurants. Usually. I have never, ever been embarrassed by their behavior in a restaurant. Until today. Charlotte threw a temper tantrum over.......something, she was throwing everything she could reach onto the floor. She also yelled off and on towards the end of our meal. Maddie wouldn't sit still in her booster seat so I had to basically pin her in by moving the table closer to us.....which subsequently pinned me in as well. And she dumped salt all over her food. I don't think we'll be eating out for a while. And I don't think we'll be going on any outings that require us to miss afternoon nap time!!

The trip wasn't entirely bad even though it sounds like it was. There is this cool room that you can make music in just by your body movements. We ran all around and danced. We would freeze and be completely still until the room was silent and then would start dancing and running around until the room was loud and full of music again. The girls loved this! They also liked going on a dinosaur hunt and seeing real black bears and wolves. Charlotte and I visited the farm area and got to see a cow, (her favorite) sheep, goats, pigs, a turkey and a bunny. And there was a donkey (Dan says he was a burrow, but I called him a donkey anyway) who was playing with a ball. He brought it over and wanted me to play with it, but I couldn't get a good grip.....I didn't know that donkeys liked playing tug of war with balls like dogs do. He was a funny donkey, it made me want to get one.....well, it made me want to take him home. I didn't express that sentiment to Dan because I know exactly what he would say! lol Before we left the girls played in this area that had all sorts of percussion instruments hanging up where the kids could beat on them with wooden sticks. That was actually a lot of fun! The day wasn't all bad, just punctuated with some pretty awful moments. We ended up buying a yearly membership to the museum of life and science 1. because we intend to go back 2. membership for 4 people is only $115 3. it cost over $30 for our family to get in today and they apply that admission to the price of the membership 4. we were told that the membership was tax deductible. We'll find out more about that at tax time, but it was just icing on the cake. I think that we'll really like visiting this museum over the next year. I felt like we did so much today but we actually barely scratched the surface. Next time I'll try and plan better! :)

The dinosaurs were HUGE!

Doesn't Charlotte like she's dino food?

Excavation. There are actually real fossils in there!

Wetlands

Percussionists

cow, Cow, COW, COW. -Charlotte

The face of an angel :)