King Tut and the Beavers

In November we went on a Saturday field trip to Idaho Falls, to see the King Tut traveling exhibit. The kids had no idea what to expect but they were immediately impressed with all the golden statues.

Here's the throne. It's interesting that King Tut was so obsessed with preserving himself and his belongings for the after-life.  I wonder how that all worked out for him, considering his "treasures" are still here. I have to give him credit though, because here we are talking about him all this time later.

This was the coolest part of the exhibit.  Toward the back of the picture is the cover of the casket and then in front we can see the remains. We were able to walk all around and see everything up close. They are just replicas of course, but that's pretty impressive preservation for such a long time.

I think this was on the cover of my history book in third grade. I probably didn't expect to be taking a picture of it with my phone someday.  The exhibit was definitely worth driving for.

In the same museum we found a discovery center. Whoever designed it had our kids in mind!
There was so much to see and do.

Josh found a beaver pond.  That's him down underneath the ice.  His peach head is looking to the left and he's wearing a grey and blue striped shirt.

Like this.  See the beavers above the ice? It was so cute. Josh loved crawling around in there and it also connected to some caves that went to the other areas of the room.  We only lost him a few times.

The kids had fun dressing up in authentic explorer clothes.

Josh found some baskets overflowing with animal puppets. We loooove puppets. Everybody got in on the fun.

Greg:  "Look. I'm a moose. I can talk. I'm a talking moose. I can say 'Aaaah.'"

The puppets were very realistic.  My favorite was the porcupine.  Nicole thought the skunk was pretty cute.

And Jonathan's... wasn't cute.  It was a tarantula, which he insisted on walking all over everything.

Including his brother's head.

They had a full size teepee and we all fit inside easily.  They are a lot more roomy than they look from the outside!  But I can't imagine living in one. It definitely made me appreciate our warm house.

Our trip to the museum was a success. Jonathan earned some arrow points for scouts by going, and it turned out to be a fun memory-builder for our family. I heard once that kids and museums don't mix. Either they were wrong or else we just have some really great kids.