A Day at the Museum

My mom (the kids "Nana") had a birthday last week, so to celebrate, we took the kids, the wonder twins, and Nana to the Natural History Museum. I was running the LA Marathon the next morning, so it sounded like a great way to relax, spend time with the family, and calm the nerves.

The museum has been through some major changes the last 2 years, with a whole brand new dinosaur wing that is pretty awesome. There is also a great new cafe. They are still building out the outdoor space, so that was all closed off.


The museum has several different diorama exhibits with themes like "Mammals of North America" (think "Night at the Museum"). The animals are life save, and the scenes are very realistic.

Major learning about the relatives

Raven can't believe how big that cat is!

There is a hall that has many hands on exhibits, where the kids can touch, build, and play. They even have a dinosaur they can reassemble, and a live bugs exhibit.

"Is it still behind me?"

Nana & the kids getting eaten

 Stella and Dash both love dinosaurs, so going through the exhibits and seeing the skeletons and bones is always a lot of fun for them.

The main hall of the museum has a T-Rex and a Triceratops. In the new dinosaur hall, they have too many dinosaurs to count! It was as we were going through this exhibit that both dogs alerted to us. Raven is not as strong at public alerting as Major is.  But the more she goes out with us, the more comfortable she seems to get with it. She seems to do better when it is just us, versus a large group, so when she does alert, we pay attention.

We had lunch about 45 minutes prior to the alerts, so we fully expected Stella to be high, most likely in the 180 to 200 range. When we checked, she was 130, with several units of insulin on board. 130 is a good reading for us, and the insulin was still working against food in her system, so we opted to wait and see what happens, but the dogs certainly got our attention. We continued on through the exhibits.

Nana & Stella, with Dash's back

The evolution of "Running Faster"

Does this skull make my head look big?

About 15 minutes later, the dogs alerted again. We stopped, took a little break, and checked. This time she was 108. Still dropping, so we let her have a few sips of Gatorade to see if we could fend it off. We were just about done, so we hit the gift shop and started to head out.

Nana and the kids

Dashasaurus

When we got to our car, we loaded up the dogs and got the kids in. As soon as I got in, The dogs alerted again, so we checked again. This time, she was 63. The dogs knew it was coming long before the meter ever did. And that was even after some Gatorade. Great low Major and Raven! Thank you for the heads up! Just another service provided by these amazing animals!

Team Blackdogsrule