Dinosaurs in the Hay

On day 3 of our vacation, we hit the road for Colorado Springs to see Scott's grandma and the rest of the family.  On the way, we stopped at the dinosaur museum in Hays.  We thought it would be a good break from the car ride, but it was only about an hour from Scott's mom's house.

We told Karsten we were going to see the dinosaurs in Hays, and later when we got to Colorado Springs and were talking to Grandma and Janeece about our trip, Karsten told them we stopped and saw dinosaurs in hay.  LOL.

Karsten INSISTED on pushing Liam and would get very irritated at us when we tried to take over (or keep him from running into things).


Note that Karsten's hand is still on the stroller - he's making sure that we don't try to take it from him!


I don't think he really understood what he was looking at, but he was pretty amazed at the size of all the dinosaurs.




Karsten said 'wow, his teeth are big'


Still pushing Liam all around.


These were glow in the dark rocks - Scott tells me that these rocks have a property that makes them glow under ultraviolet light.


Liam was enjoying the ride and was happy his big brother didn't drive him into too many stationary objects.


Checking out the fish within a fish fossil.  The big fish must have eaten a whole, smaller fish and you can see the smaller fish preserved in the tummy of the big fish.


A huge turtle!


This statue was showing how people excavate dinosaur bones.  Karsten thought he was a real person and didn't understand why he was sitting so still.




This big dino was the big hit at the museum.  We came back to see him three times.  Karsten was looking at him and suddenly the dino came to life and rawr'd.  After Karsten jumped briefly, he was enthralled and wanted the dinosaur to do it again and again.


We checked out the smaller dinosaurs while we waited for the bid dino to rawr again.


We managed to lure him aware to see a few more things.  This room had some live snakes and hands on activities for the kids.  There was even an area where they could dig in a big sandbox to excavate dino bones.  But Karsten wasn't interested in digging for bones, he wanted to go back and see the big dino again.


So back we went to see the big dino...again.


This friend of big dino was cool, but he didn't rawr, so he obviously got less attention.


After the dino museum, we had planned to go to a mexican restaurant that our friends are always raving about on Facebook.  We pulled up in front of the restaurant and it was closed on Mondays.  SO sad - I was  excited for mexican food!  We headed back towards all of the restaurants near the highway and ended up at Freddie's Steak Burgers.  With the promise of an ice cream cone, Karsten ate a great lunch.

Enjoying his ice cream cone.  We had to send a picture to my dad because Karsten said, 'Papa likes ice cream, he would be jealous!'


While I was feeding Liam his lunch and Scott was getting something at the counter, Karsten decided it would be a good idea to eat the BOTTOM of his ice cream cone.  He wanted some of the cone and the ice cream was in the way at the top.  So, being the problem solver he is, he started at the bottom.  He realized the problem when it started dripping on him - okok, he didn't realize the problem, we did.  I'm not so sure he understand why we found it funny that he ate the bottom of his cone.


Full tummy makes for a happy boy!  He was watching Karsten eat his ice cream longingly.  Soon enough Liam will be eating everything Karsten eats!
 

Then we hit the road again - on our way to Scott's grandma's house.  The dinosaurs wore the boys out and they took good naps on the way. It helped make the drive go faster for them and was nice and quiet for us for a while.  I even got a chance to read a book and some magazines - yay!