Today we went to see an epic battle, the Battle of the Titans!! Or so it was called. There wasn't any actual clashes or battles, there were a couple of titans though! These titans were dinosaurs. Millions of years was thrown in our faces at every turn and every time it happened Sam would roll his eyes and shake his head and say "Not true.". He's my boy! The battle took place at the Royal Botanical Gardens. It makes sense I suppose, dinosaurs in a botanical garden makes sense. We were asked by the girls MANY times before we got there if they were real dinosaurs that were going to be there. We assured them repeatedly that they were just fake dinos, but that dinosaurs did once roam the earth, that Adam and Eve walked with the dinosaurs and that God made them just the way they were with no evolving involved! The girls aren't really into the science part of it all yet, as long as they weren't alive, they were happy. :-)
And so we're off! Let me share with you the photos from our trip into part of God's amazing creation, one which we missed seeing in it's original splendor but that we enjoy looking back on, fondly, knowing that we'll never have to worry about being eaten by a t-rex or stepped on by anything else several stories tall. :-)
This is the head of a triceratops. It's kind of big. I imagine the real thing would have been a sight to behold (from a distance).
Rora was adequately impressed by the size of this one.
This was a little plastic replica of the scull of a dinosaur. Not sure what kind, but they implied that it was related to crocodiles.
As you can tell, it is believed secularly that this tooth is 65million years old. It really amazes me what people will believe. They don't even stop to think it through, they just take the word of people who spent too much money on a worthless education so they could take the word of other people who did the same thing based on a "theory" that has never and can never be proven. But, because it's easier to believe that order came from chaos, that dust exploded and instead of chaos, order was produced, people just walk by, read it and accept it. (I'd like to know how many investigators find that after an explosion that the crime scene is more orderly than it was before.) Now, after the explosion that brought order to nothing that was there before, the universe and all that is in it was produced. The Earth was formed and went through various stages of chaos and starting over before life was formed. Again, order. Then, all these animals turned into other animals and there's no proof of that either. AND, not only that, but somehow, the animals decided on their own that they needed to adapt and over the course of millions and millions and millions of years, they figured out on their own how to adapt to their own environments and produce novel things that man can never hope to reproduce anything near as amazing ( like spider silk that is pound for pound stronger than steel, or sperm whales that can go so deep into the depths of the ocean that man can't follow them there, and yet they don't suffer from the bends, how about giraffes that without the valves in their necks would die when they put their heads down or horses whose hearts aren't powerful enough to pump all the blood they need and so the pads in their hooves are used as pumps too, what about ostriches? They have immune systems that doctors can't figure out! They never fall ill from diseases that devastate other bird breeds.) and somehow they survived all those millions of years in between without those amazing things from the start! Without having ALL the things they have now, their ancestors couldn't have survived. They'd have died in a generation because they weren't able to protect themselves or defend themselves or feed themselves or anything! How is it that there have NEVER been any of the in-betweens found? Yet, this makes sense and it's believable?! Please, even when you hear them talk on tv or in books, they say how well these animals are DESIGNED. It seems to me, that to have animals so well designed, SOMEONE must have designed them right the first time, and not only that, all at the same time, well, in the matter of 6 literal days anyway.
Something about that evolution thing. (Anything highlighted is a link)
There were other things there a little easier to believe. This for instance. There were dinosaurs that didn't get along! I'm not sure if these are scale models or if they were just teeny, tiny t-rexes.
This is a model of a dinosaur bone.
This is a little leg, next to a BIG leg. They are the same leg, one is just bite size and the other is big enough to squish you!
Here's a picture of the big one from across the room. That's how far away you had to get to get a picture of the whole thing. It was BIG!!
You can see behind the head of the t-rex where we came in. There's a triceratops next to it and a TINY little girl between them. I think she was trying to help them resolve their differences, I'm not sure how well that worked out for her though.
This was a nifty thing. The kids (and Mike) were looking through the eyes of a t-rex to see what it looked like to see the world through their eyes.
You could do it with the triceratops too. Not sure what the fascination was with those two dinos, but that seemed to be the main focus.
This is supposed to be what it looked like when a trike was walking. It said they were slow, but they could turn on a dime. I imagine they assumed they were slow because they never found footprints of them running in the mud. Although, truth be told, if you weighed that much and were having to walk through the mud, would you run? You might if you were being chased by a t-rex!
This is what scientists think the output of a triceratops was per hour. They assume the input was something the equivalent of a 33 gallon garbage bag full of leaves (and whatever happened to be on those leaves).
I'm not sure what this is, there wasn't anything there to tell you and if you weren't careful, you'd misfit, it was the same color as the wall!
This is apparently part of a horn of a trike. As they point out with the picture of the longhorn there, the bones inside the horns are MUCH smaller than the horns themselves, implying that while we have a bone of this size in front of us, the actual horn would have been much larger.
This is supposed to give us an idea of scale. This is a mini scull of a triceratops to scale next to a scale model of a Volkswagen Bug and a Mini. We were adequately impressed with the size of it. Should one also take from this lessons that they'd come in lots of bright colors and be fun to ride?! :-) If they walked slow though, you probably shouldn't be in a hurry if you decided to ride one (you should also hope there were no hungry t-rexes in the area).
I know you already realize how I feel about these assumptions of the millions and millions and millions of years, but if I understand food chains correctly, the meat eaters eat the plant eaters and the plant eaters eat the plants and the plants get their energy from the sun, right? Well, if the dinosaurs started out 130,000,000 years BEFORE the plants, what did they eat? Now, I didn't stop to read these things, but I'm curious, is there something I'm missing? I'm I'm looking at these right, what did the dinosaurs eat for those 130 MILLION years before the plants? No, but they do think flowering plants weren't there the whole time.
Here is Sam and Rora admiring the triceratops!
Now, you may be wondering where Mike, Caleigh and Eva are. Well, I'll tell you, they're at a puppet show! I'll show you in a minute, first.....
First, Sam has to get away from the t-rex!
So does Aurora. She doesn't look worried.
Alright, now, it's bad enough that they think that dinosaurs evolved in the first place. They think everything evolved, but really? This is supposed to be a velociraptor! Now, I've seen Jurassic Park several times and never saw one running around with feathers and wings.
Here is more about this epic battle. You can't see it very well though.
And there you have it. It's a miniature version of what they found in Montana.
Here is the webpage about it, the OFFICIAL one. I'm curious though. According to the website, these two dinosaurs were locked in an epic battle at the time of death. This leads me to wonder, first, what killed both of them at the same time WHILE they were battling? Second, why did nothing come to eat them afterward before they had a chance to fossilize? Well, the Smithsonian has some opinions on that and believe it or not, they consider a FLOOD to have been a possibility for their being found together and drowning to be a possibility for why so many dinosaurs are usually found with their backs arched in "death throws"! Isn't it amazing?! Now, they think the flood might have been local, but they're not putting all their stock in the theories of the "Dino Cowboy".
On our way out of the exhibit and toward the puppet show we saw these on the floor.
There were more before the first one, but I didn't see a need to photograph ALL of them. They're just a bunch of scientific imaginings anyway.
This is a sign for Hell Creek, it's a place in Montana where a lot of fossils are found.
Three guesses as to what THIS is all about! They think this is what is responsible for killing the dinosaurs. Personally, I'm pretty sure a world wide flood is responsible for all the fossils and stuff. I guess it ALL comes down to a) they don't want to believe in God because if they did, they'd have to answer to Him (hate to break it to them, that will happen anyway) and b) if God didn't do it, they need to explain another way and apparently this is the theory that won out.
Here is more about their theories.
So, ON TO THE PUPPET SHOW!!
These are the two puppets that told the children and adults present all about the T-Rex and Triceratops.
Sam and I didn't want to stay and listen, SO, we went for a walk to see some flowers.
LOOK! Blooming flowers in the dead of winter! WAIT! There's more to come!
These were all in the same room, I KNEW you were all missing the beautiful flowers on the blog, I know I was! So, I thought I'd show some promises of spring in the shivery weather.
Now, admittedly, these aren't flowers, BUT, they're not cold weather plants either!
This is a VERY prickly plant, I advise against touching it, at least not the trunk.
Now we're in another room.
This is a VERY, VERY, VERY big plant. See the man on the left? It's a VERY big plant.
I'm pretty fond of this flower. He's a rarity. I kinda like him. :-)
Now, there are some Koi in here that the girls LOVE, here they are!
Pink coat is Caleigh. Rora is to the right of her and there's a little boy on her left that INSISTED, to everyone who would listen that if you put your fingers in there "The fish won't even bit off your fingers! Honest!" He was emphatic about it.
That's the little boy in the yellow. He would tell anyone who would listen.
There's more fish where she's looking. They can swim under the floor from the big opening to that little one next to her. There's a little fountain there too. The boy in yellow was very fascinated by this too.
Now, when Mike brought the TWO girls in to where Sam and I were, Caleigh and Rora. Now, you may have noticed there we had started with THREE girls with us. Well, there were a LOT of people in the puppet show and at some point Eva got separated from Mike and the girls. He brought me the other girls and took Sam to go look for her when he realized she hadn't ran ahead to join us. Caleigh had to be reminded repeatedly that God was in control and that He could keep her safe. So, we prayed together that He would show Mike or Sam where she was soon and bring her back to us. Not 5 minutes later in walks Mike carrying Eva. She had gone in the OTHER direction, back near where the dinosaurs were. Apparently when she couldn't see us she went back toward the last place we were with her. Very smart girl (kind of), but she got distracted by a water feature and just stood there watching it until Mike found her. He was fairly emotionally fragile after that. Now mind you, this whole affair with her lasted MAYBE 10 to 15 minutes, but it felt a LOT longer, especially to Mike and Caleigh.
There she is, safe and sound.
And here is Mike, a little worse for wear.
Fascinated with the fish!
There are some of these signs here and there in this room. In the year that we've been coming, we have yet to see ANY of these. They are apparently VERY good at hiding. We keep looking, but I'm wondering if they're actually here.
And there you have it! This was our afternoon. We had a good time, ignored a lot of evolutionary bologna and were amazed at God's miraculous designs. He put every bit as much detail in these little lizards as he did in the gigantic mammoths in the exhibit hall. He THE Master of design. I stand amazed and I hope my children, through all their lives stand amazed as well.
God bless you all and keep you safe throughout this day.
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