Massachusetts 2012 - Part 2 (The Dinosaur Place)

Quick update before I get to the meat of the post. Lucas had his first week of senior kindergarten last week, and for the most part, it went well. The only issue that cropped up was that he got in trouble on the school bus. When he and his friend Ryan get together, they get a little "energetic," and I guess he was getting up on the bus, which is a big no-no. We've told him to sit in a different seat from Ryan, and so far, it seems to be working. Other than that, everything is great as he is happy to be back at school. Tomorrow night is a pizza party and "meet the teacher," so we'll get to see his classroom again (since he's in the same one as last year).

So, back to Massachusetts. As you may or may not know, Lucas and I drove down a week ahead of Marilu, who then flew down. During that week, I had to come up with stuff to do to keep Lucas busy and to prevent me from going crazy. One of those things was a trip down to south Connecticut to The Dinosaur Place. It's a neat little place that has a walking trail with plenty of lifesize dinosaur models, and it culminates in a good-sized splash pad and playground. We ended up killing a good 4-5 hours there. Below you'll see the highlights.

This gives you an idea of the scale of the dinosaurs. They were really well crafted. I have to admit I was impressed.

I told Lucas to stand under this dinosaur and try and look scared. It didn't work out so well...

...so I joined in.

This next photo is probably my favorite one from the entire trip. It came out exactly as I hoped. (that is, Lucas fleeing from a charging Styracosaurus)

If you look closely, Lucas is pretending to steal the dino eggs. My direction, once again.

"Are you ready to rumble?!"

Some photos from the splash pad.

I'm not sure what it is about upward-shooting streams of water, but both boys and girls love them.

And we wrap up with some photos from the playground. They had a very unique spiderweb-like structure that Lucas loved climbing on. I've never seen something like this anywhere else so it was nice to see him play on something less common that swings and slides.

A better shot of the entire structure. It goes up pretty high, and I was a little nervous about Lucas from time to time, but we made it through the experience concussion free.