It Is Cold, Yet We Venture Out

Frigid temperatures have kept us indoors for some time now (in addition to the busyness/illness/laziness combo). I decided that something must be done about it, however, so we tromped over to the Natural History Museum after speech therapy to renew our membership and check out what I thought Bastian had meant when he said "the place with the moons." It turns out, he was very upset about my getting it wrong, but due to having to pick up Papa and already being there, after some fit-throwing on his part, we all agreed to go in anyway.

There's an exhibit on aging with lots of games. While the boys watched other boys work the wrinkling machine, I sat around being self-absorbed. I'm not really certain what prairie dogs have to do with aging. I didn't read the sign.Aleks really likes gems for some reason, so I talked him into checking out these massive jewels they've got lying around in the crystal gallery. He seemed mildly impressed, but was wondering why the sapphire was yellow.
We also looked at the wide variety of opal. I think he likes that gems are worth a lot of money and the idea that they come from the ground is appealing. In his mind, it seems that one could just find a ruby while digging in the garden and then you could sell it and make tons of money to buy whatever you want with. I tried to explain mining to him, but he hasn't quite caught on yet.
We watched the ducks out the window in the cold, cold, cold snow.
I took goofy photos of myself.
The children love the dinosaur skeletons. LOVE. Bastian doesn't quite get how long ago the dinosaurs died and thinks that the bones are really their bodies. Aleks was able to completely explain how fossils are formed, however.
We noticed this giant prehistoric deer for the first time. It's an Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus), the biggest variety of deer that ever lived. It lived during the late Pleistocene. It is thought that humans may have helped to drive them into extinction by hunting them. It is really, really, really big.
The boys touched the giant rotating earth as we passed by.