Afternoon at the museum

Today was cold, rainy and gross, so we picked an inside activity and headed to the museum.  Riley had been to the History Museum with BiBi and Zee, but we hadn't gone with him yet.  We walked through the front doors and we were off on a tour of Riley's favorite rooms.

We started out in the gem exhibit.  There were brightly colored rocks, buttons to push and walls of gems to run up to.  Riley picked out his favorites and asked if we could take some of them home.  Luckily, he got distracted by the next exhibit and forgot about his pending personal rock collection.

Next up were the dinosaurs.  There were big ones and little ones, bones you could touch, models up the the ceiling and so many animals to say hi to.  Riley kept looking up at the dinosaur displays and saying "ooooohh" - so much so that people were waiting for his reaction because its just so cute!

There is an area where you can play with toy dinosaurs and Riley and Chris had a great time at that station.  By the end, there was a trail of dinosaurs on the ground and Riley was ready to make his way to the next room.

The museum is very kid friendly and has a whole section set up where you can dig for fossils and play with bones.  Their only rule is that you have to wear safety goggles at all times to protect you from flying dust.  Riley really wanted to dig and play but had no interest in wearing his goggles.  We tried to explain that if he wanted to play, he had to wear the glasses, but he didn't quite get the correlation.  Needless to say, that was the exhibit that we had to carry him out of, crying and making a scene.

But all was forgiven when we went to the Hall of Animals.  We saw lions and tigers and bears, oh my!  Riley would go up to the windows and say hi, then move to the next window and point out the animals he knows.  Lots of the animals were either kitties or horses (because those are the animals that he knows best) but he had a great time looking around.

We only spent about an hour and a half at the museum but because of our new gift membership, we don't feel bad about missing some of the exhibits.  It just gives us something to look forward to on our next visit!