Monte L Bean and the Animals

A few weeks back, Peter and I went to a cool animal museum with our friends Crystal and Marshal. Peter and Marshal are just a month apart in age and Jonathan and Ben (Marshal's dad) both did the Flagship program, so we were in China together. Crystal and I try to get together frequently because the boys play well together and we like to visit and have adult conversation together. Crystal and I mostly plot out future homes, talk furniture and kids. Anyway, Crystal and Marshal were going to the museum and invited us to come along. We jumped at the chance because I know Peter loves that place and I needed to get out of the house. 

The Monte L Bean Museum is perfect for these boys because it is a small museum, packed with taxidermied animals. The boys don't get too tired walking around and there are cool animals everywhere they turn. They ran around, played on the slide for a while, found the elephant and the hippo, we went upstairs and saw the deer, lions and bears and we went downstairs and saw birds and snakes. It's just big enough to keep them busy but not to big to bore them. 

Peter learning about a brown bear.

Walking through the African safari...

 It looked like they were working on setting up some new exhibits while we were there, so we'll have to stop by again sometime soon to see if there are any new animals to learn about. Also, the museum does live animal shows- we've never been, but I really want to take Peter sometime. I think he would enjoy seeing some living animals up close.

Marshal, Crystal and Peter

Learning about underwater creatures

It was a great day with the Jones. The boys were happy and they saw lots of animals. Crystal and I got to talk about future plans and hopes for how they turn out. We will miss these guys a ton when we move.

Shanghai Science and Technology Museum

I just found a bunch of blog post drafts that I started when we were living in China, but then things got busy and I didn't finish them. So, the next couple of posts will be some catch-up posts from China days. There will most likely be less detail because it's been a number of months since we did these things, but I'd rather have something than nothing.

This day was when we were going to pick Jonathan's sisters from Shanghai when they came to visit. We had a day in which to spend in Shanghai before they arrived, and we went to a museum that I'd read was great for kids. I figured Peter was a trooper going to things we were interested in, so it was only fair that we found a place for him.  

Cool dragon statue outside of the museum

When we entered, we first went to the animal museum section. Peter loves animals, so we thought this would be a great place to start. We were not let down. There were so many different displays with animals from all over the world. Peter was in love.

Jonathan and Peter on their African safari

Kicking it with the big-horned sheep

Walking along the rocky terrain

There is something I really love about any picture I have with Peter holding Jonathan's hand. I love watching these guys together and when they have cute...manly...moments.

Also, as we walked along, we were momentarily adopted by a college-aged Chinese guy. He was fascinated by Peter's hair, and that we were living in China. He was amazed that Jonathan spoke Chinese and that we could get along just fine every day. He asked lots of questions. The only one I remember is him asking if we had mosquitoes in America- he heard that they didn't exist there. Tragically they do. He was a little hard to understand, but nice. He wanted to spend more time with us and show us around Shanghai, but we were leaving the next day, so we didn't get to take him up on that.

After all the animals, we walked through a small section that represented the landscape of a western part of China with huge rocky- almost similar to some of the rocky areas in Utah, only grey instead of red rock. After we walked around the big rocks we came to insect land.

Giant rocky landscape....of somewhere...

Insect Land!

In the insect area, there were giant animatronic bugs on the walls above our heads! There were displays that talked about the different stages of life that bugs go through and how they grow, what they eat and how they live. There were also a few terrariums with live insects, snakes and lizards in them. Peter loved these as well.

Up next was a small aquarium area. It wasn't too big, but that worked great with Peter's short attention span.

Peter and Jonathan looking at the fish

We finally left the animal section of the museum and had to decide where to go next. We went through a robotics area- but not all the robots were working, so it was partly really cool and partly a let down. We saw a section on the human body and walked through it, but it wasn't super kid friendly, so we didn't spend too much time there. There was a spider exhibit, but for obvious reasons, I avoided that. I don't remember all the other options, but we could have very easily spend 2-3 days here I feel like...except for the small part about having a little boy who wants to run and explore, that's why instead we went to the Children's Rainbow Land.

That place was a blast. There were rainbows all over and once you followed the rainbow path in, there were different rooms with different things that could play with and do, it was super engaging and bright. I loved it, and so did Peter, and Jonathan. There was one area with little egg shaped chairs, and soft flowers and trees with glowing lights all over, there were slides and little tunnels to crawl through (see below picture).

Part of the play room photo cred

More play rooms photo cred

Entering Rainbow Land!

Learning about bubbles

There was a really cool hallway with colored lights that went from red to orange to yellow and so on. It was really cool to walk along. Along the hall there were different play rooms with lights, sounds, slides, animals and all sorts of other fun things. Peter was tired by this point, so he was carried through most of it, but if we had started here, he could have spent the entire day just in this section and been a happy camper.

Following the rainbow road out.

Giant lite-brite board

We loved this museum. I would have loved to go back or have discovered it before the end of our time in China. There were so many different places to explore and it was a great place for kids and adults.