Nativity at the Bean Museum

For Family Home Evening we went to the Bean Museum with my parents and siblings. My mom knew that Auntie Josie wanted to come because she "hasn't been there for years!" Uncle Patrick coming, though? That was a surprise. Uncle David even showed up in the middle of the reptile show. It was a nice surprise to get to spend the evening with them as well.

The main reason we wanted to go was to see the nativity that is apparently an annual tradition, though I don't think it could be too annual since I don't remember it being a tradition when I worked in the Integrative Biology department—we even held our department Christmas dinner in the museum and there wasn't anything quite this festive in the museum. I think it's a wonderful tradition, though. 

There are all sorts of animals adoring baby Jesus: lions and lambs, kangaroos, beavers, elephants, storks and penguins, to name a few. Rachel spent quite a bit of time adoring him, herself.

We hadn't meant to time our trip quite so well but somehow we managed to show up just minutes before the reptile show started. I really enjoy the reptile show and so does everyone else. Except for Rachel. She hates it. Before she even got out of the car she asked us if everything in the museum was dead. We assured her that everything was dead, but we forgot to mention the reptile show. 

The girl doing the show brought out a tiny tortoise and Rachel almost immediately started screaming. She couldn't even get words out, just, "A-buh-duh-duh-duh-buh-duh!"

Today we saw a tortoise, a bearded dragon, and a bald python. None of them were particularly scary but Rachel was terrified of them all. After they were all put away she giggled and said, "I don't know why that tortoise didn't want me to pet it. I'm not scary!" 

How interesting she remembers it that way. 

Anyway, we had fun walking around the museum after the show. At one point I accidentally called it a library instead of a museum so we joked that it really was like a library—a library of dead animals.

They're setting up a new exhibit in one of the wings of the museum and we peeked around the retaining wall—it looks really neat! I can't wait until it's finished.