Monday, April 9, 2012
Last Christmas, Bethany's cousin Ruby gave our little paleontologist the perfect gift--tickets to the Dinosaur Park in Ogden. And we finally redeemed them on a lovely Saturday in March. (I've forgotten the exact date, but does it really matter in the eternal scheme of things? The point is, we had a blast!) We convinced cousins Ruby and Macy to come along--with their dad of course--and my parents joined us, too. We had a dino-mite time!
These guys moved, looked, and sounded like REAL dinosaurs! The girls were fascinated and scared and we could hardly tear them away:
Then we admired all of the sparkly jewels!
I think this stone is bigger than Bethie's head! 
And we "oooohed" and "ahhhhhed" over some pretty impressive fossils:
"T-Rex! I'm a tyrannosaurus, I'm the biggest carnivore in the Cretaceous forest!" (I know way too many Dinosaur Train songs for my own good.)
Bethany was so impressed, her eyes glowed red. Seriously, these indoor pictures are terrible. I kept turning the flash on, then off, then on, then off--either way was the pits. Let's just say there were lots of cool fossils indoors, but I won't insult your eyesight by showing you my crummy pictures. Let's take it outside.
Ah. Much better. Outside, they had this great sand pit where the kids could go on an archaeological dig. And they REALLY "digged" it. (Pardon the pun.)
EUREKA! (I've always wanted to yell that. Do paleontologists yell that?)
It was really hard to tear the girls away from that sand pile, believe me. But we finally persuaded them--we had to go exploring! We had dinosaurs to find. So we hit the path:
And we saw some pretty impressive dinosaur statues, like this parasauralophus:
Note: I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd ever be able to recognize and name various types of dinosaurs. Who ever said that being a mother wasn't educational?
And this ankylosaurus:
"I'm a hungry, hungry herbivore, plants are what I'm hungry for. Don't eat insects don't eat critters, just gimme some o them dern fern fritters . . ." (Yup, Dinosaur Train again. Don't judge me. It's educational. AND it promotes a positive view of adoption.)
And speaking of education, Bethany took her role as instructor-in-all-things-dinosaur VERY seriously!
After looking at the many statues--which was TOTALLY fun-- we took some time to be a little silly:
And we explored a cave:
And then we hit the VERY COOL playground. Wow, that playground was fun!
Bethany climbed on every dinosaur she could find. Then she promptly named them each "My Beauty," (pronounced like "Beu-tah"--she had a real southern drawl going there)and boy, it was hard to persuade her to leave "Beu-tah" when it was time to go!
(A girl and her pet dinosaur. It's the American way. Before America was invented.) Anyway, we had an absolutely WONDERFUL time. The weather was perfect, the girls loved being together, we were in dinosaur heaven. If any of you mothers haven't taken your kids to the Dinosaur Park--DO IT. It's like Dino-Disneyland. The playground alone is worth the drive. THANK YOU, Tracee, for a wonderful Christmas present!
