Utah Museum of Natural History

Friday we decided to take our girls on a mini-stay-cation. We got tickets for the opening day at the Museum of Natural History & took the girls out of school an hour early to make our ticket-time. The museum was very impressive. They have five levels and recommend that you take the elevator to the top and work your way down through time (the top floor has the most recent events & the lower you go the older the displays).
However, Sarah has been dying to see some REAL dinosaur bones and so we indulged her and started at the bottom and worked our way up. The girls had a great time digging for dinosaur bones (Sarah unearthed some bones from the bottom of the pile that quite likely had never been found before since we were there on the first day). The museum has an indoor and outdoor digging area and we were happy that it was pleasant enough outside to let them dig in the larger pit.
The museum also had some fun magnetic puzzle pottery that you try to stick back to a metal vase. Because it was opening day we were also able to go into some of the archive rooms where we saw row after row of dead snakes, lizards and toads in jars. The girls were a little put off when they found out they were real animals, and wondered if the people who work there killed all those snakes or if they found them dead. Sadly they asked the question after we left.
The museum had hours worth of entertainment. I was very impressed with the interactive displays and the amount of child-friendly hands on content provided.
So other than being grateful for dinosaurs I am also grateful to live in a community that values the arts & museums and that we have such neat places that we can visit in our own backyard.