dinosaurs

My sister, her husband, and my niece and nephew came to visit me this weekend. My nephew Michael, 5, is obsessed with dinosaurs, so we thought it would be fun to take him to dinosaur ridge.

At first he was excited about the idea, but as we got ready to leave the house, he suddenly said "I think I'll stay home". I thought that was strange so I said "Don't you want to see some dinosaurs?" He was like "No, I don't want to see them anymore".

After further discussion, which caused him to get VERY upset and almost cry, I realized he thought there were going to be REAL dinosaurs at the park and he was afraid one would eat him. Once we told him that there were no live dinosaurs he got excited about going.

We saw some dinosaur bones in rocks, and some dinosaur tracks. You can touch everything at dinosaur ridge, which is really cool. You can distinguish between a dinosaur bone and rocks because the bones feel waxy when you touch them. Then we went into this museum. There we were accosted by this excitable young lad, age 21, who wanted to give us a tour of the museum (we were the only people there).

He started in on his lecture, which was interesting, but Michael kept farting really loudly. My sister and I had to walk away because we were both laughing so hard. Every time my sister starts laughing it makes me laugh even harder. I used to get in trouble for that all the time when I was a kid because my dad didn't like it when we would start laughing. She also used to do things to make me laugh but she wouldn't laugh.

Anyway, at one point the guy started showing us dinosaur parts and then he would show us these toy dinosaurs the part came from. We saw plates from a stegasaurus and spikes from the tail of a triceratop. The guy mentioned that they've found teeth from a t rex but have never found a whole one in Colorado, though they believe t rex lived here. I suggested that another dinosaur may have eaten the t rex in like Utah or something, and then pooped the teeth out in Colorado. He said "but the t rex was the apex predator" and I was like "maybe they ate it after the t rex died". He made a face as though he had a headache, and then said "um, interesting theory".

He asked if we had any questions so I said "I would like to know how dinosaurs painted their toenails". The guy gave me a look and said "they didn't paint their toenails". Then Michael, who was holding a t rex toy model, held it up and said "yes they did! this t rex has red toenails". The guy took the model away from Michael and hid it behind a display.

"Any other questions?" he asked, glaring at me. I raised my hand, causing my niece and nephew to start giggling. I play a game with them all the time where I raise my hand and when one of them calls on me I ask a ridiculous question. The guy sighed and was like "go ahead, what's your question?".

He had just given my niece the horns of a triceratop to hold, and they were really heavy. So I said "how did dinosaurs used to kiss if they had all these horns and stuff on their heads?" I took a apatosaurus model and pretended it was trying to kiss the triceratops. I made the apatosaurus go "Ow, you poked my eye!" The guy took the models away from me and hid them with the t rex. Then he said "I don't think they used to kiss each other like people".

He suggested that we look at some other display, and excused himself. My niece and nephew said it was their favorite museum visit ever.