Queen's birthday ...

We were supposed to spend today clearing out the sleep-out in preparation of the man's friend's arrival from Auckland. I'm starting to think the love of my life is procrastinating ... every time I mention the sleep-out he suddenly remembers something else we desperately need to do "right now that can't wait and must be done this very minute".

After a very long lunch (how is it that S can consume two pieces of toast, bacon, eggs, hash browns and spaghetti inside ten minutes, yet can make a sandwich last over an hour ?) we decided to take to the rugrats to the museum.

We love museums. Some more than others. We took them to Te Papa (the national museum) on our trip down the country, and they adored it. K especially. He's a child who wants to know why and how things work (he pulled apart his first tape-deck to see what made it go). And museums have become a lot more user friendly lately I have noticed. Lots of hands-on touchy-feely things for the rugrats to play with. The hard part was persuading them to leave at the end.

We heard an interesting talk, aimed at the rugrats' level of understanding, on fossils, sedimentary rock, and how they tell the history of the world. Coincidentally this ties in beautifully with the rocks and fossils that they found at my parents yesterday when we were there for lunch ... my parents have an old limestone quarry on their farm.

The nice thing about the Otago Museum is that right at the very top is what they call the Animal Attic ... a fully restored, self described "museum within a museum". An animal display the way museums used to be with specimens stuffed and mounted in huge wooden and glass cases. It's great that the rugrats can see all the different types of birds and animals, but sad that they were shot just so that someone could say "Look, I've got one of these thingy-ma-jigs".

Honestly, we humans have an awful lot to answer for !