Paul and Stacy Jensen Family

Thanksgiving Weekend

A multi-post travelogue of our adventures in Utah.
Part II

Friday came early. Way too early. Despite all of the fatigue and lack of sleep the previous nights, we woke up in Utah at the same time we would normally wake up in Florida. So an easy day was called for. We arranged to meet Mike and Kim's family at the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. We had a great time with Alayna who's last trip to the museum was when she was only a little over a year old. Back then she was absolutely amazed by the dinosaurs and a little bit scared at the same time. This time proved the same.
Alayna enjoyed walking around the museum touching and playing with the hands on exhibits as well as looking at the huge dinosaur bones. Her favorite was walking underneath and between the legs of a tyrannosaurus rex. Not every little girl can brag to their friends that they have been able to do that.

The musuem has three really fun features for the kids that like to be active. One is a 'build your own dinosaur' exhibit. Kids are able to choose from various dinosaur parts and build up their own weird looking monsters. At least it starts out with the kids, but the Dad's usually end up playing as well.

Another fun 'Dad' activity is the Erosion Table. This is a water table with slopes, pools, sand, plastic trees and dinosaurs built for the kids to learn how erosion helps find fossils. Mike used the water table to build earth dams, control the flow of water downstream, demonstrate classic dam failures, and try to overcome the problems associated with a dam built of sand by embedding plastic dinosaurs and palm trees in his work.

Alayna and Kade built an island 'together' and put as many palm trees on the island as they could find. This was a first attempt at collaboration for these newly re-acquainted cousins. The efforts were not exactly smooth, but the results were positive.

After looking around a bit and observing the rest of the museum patrons playing at the water table, we found that most of the girls were making little islands and most of the boys were making and destroying dams. Cavell just ate lunch.
The last leg of the exhibit is a 'working' quarry. Kids are allowed to jump into a large sandbox with a paint brush. The idea is to carefully brush away the sand granules from a large dinosaur fossil located under the sand. What usually happens is the sand gets flung about semi-violently and parents cringe thinking about where the sand is ending up. Eventually Alayna tired of playing in the sand and we were on our way.

We had a quiet evening with Minda, Chad, and Jaxton. Hooray for quiet evenings.