dinosaurs vs. indians

Last week my hubby watched that movie "Cowboys vs. Aliens". Which was supposed to be pretty silly, after all it's a crazy premise. Spoiler: the truth is, I walked out of the room after about 10-15 minutes as it was pretty much just a lot of people shooting each other or getting attacked by aliens. Not my style....

...however, today the kids and I staged our slightly different version, "Dinosaurs vs. Indians"...a.k.a. off to the Smithsonian we go (again). As always (ALWAYS!) we got to Natural History, to "go see my friend T.Rex!" as the boy puts it. We saw him, and all the animal bones, and spent some quality time with the Egyptian mummies, having quite a discussion about the mummy-making process. I think the kids were equal parts engrossed and just plain grossed-out.

 

 (Making kissy faces at T.Rex)

 This smiling face is to remind me that the boy's temper tantrum did not last all day, it only seemed like it. He really did have a lot of fun. He also really did have one heck of a temper tantrum that almost resulted in us going home after just 1 hour (we had lunch instead, which improved morale considerably!).

 This is my artistic photo of the day, the reflection was a happy accident. I think we will call it, "Pondering the mysteries of life and death".

So, you might ask, what about the "vs. Indians" part of the day?  After our time at Natural History, we hiked down the National Mall past Air-and-Space to a museum that none of us had ever explored before: The National Museum of the American Indian. It's a beautiful building, architecturally, and pretty interesting. I would like to spend more time there on a day when we go there first and have the energy to see the whole thing. We saw about half today, from a drummer as we came in; to a great exhibit on the relationship of Native Americans to their horses, and such wonderful art depicting it; to the interactive area for families with a  teepee the kids could climb in and explore, basket weaving, and pictogram drawing. Here are the highlights:

I love Spring Break. It makes me look forward to having the whole summer to do lots of adventuring together.