Day at the Museum

What do you get when you combine three moms, a grandma, three cousins ages 2,4 and 8, and two teenagers, ages 13 and 16? A hell of a good time. We spent Friday at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science - that's why there was no post yesterday.

The Transporter transported us and that was a treat because I hate rush hour traffic, and Denver's is famous. Ironically, the museum is ½ mile from the hospital where I've been tortured, er, tested since April. I know the way very well. He did great, even though the construction was challenging.

We love this museum. It has great, classic exhibits, like the gems and minerals, which is my favorite. With a group the size of ours, you tend to move like an amoeba, as in S L O W L Y. We soon gave up on sticking together, though. My boys would go ahead, the 8 year-old is one of those who has to push every button and interact with every kids' interaction station, so she and her 6 year-old cousin tended to lag behind. I stayed with my friend, my high school friend who lives in Canada and had called me the night before to say that she was unexpectedly in town and did I want to get together. Such a nice surprise! (Her mom, who came with us, lives here in Denver which is convenient for me since I get to see my friend more because of it.)

Also along was my friend's sister visiting from England. Neither she nor her husband is English...but I can't tell you why he's assigned there. The whole “then I have to kill you” thing. Her kids were the youngest, but so well behaved and genuinely interested in all that was around them.

The body exhibit was a big hit. You get a little credit card like “pass” to put in the different stations, and they measure you're height, your stride length, test you on the treadmill, test your grip strength, do a computer “aging” simulation, and let you dress up like a scientist and do actual chemistry experiments. Just for the record, The Transporter is now 5'11”, and OYT 5'7.5”, leaving me, at 5'3”, as the shortest...You get a print-out of results at the end.

Catching up with old friends is great, especially when you have the kind of friendship where you just pick up where you left off, which was about four years ago. So much has happened in each of our lives since then, and we just babbled away about it, picking up the threads of the conversation in between the, “Have you seen the size of that moose?” and “Try these deer ears, you can really hear a LOT better!” The kids snaked around us as we saw amazing, life size dioramas of the worlds' animals, of ancient cultures. We landed the space shuttle, built models of airplanes, saw satellite imagery, and the kids played astronaut, complete with foam space suits and a pretend control module.

We are still the same girls who were on the gymnastics team together, who knocked over the oil display at the gas station when I first had my license, who played in band together, shared a math class, and have kept in touch all these years. We may look a little older, move a little slower, and have kids of our own, but our hearts are still the same, and we'll always be forever friends.

Now I need to go watch “Night at the Museum”...