During the Staycation, our mission has been to do things we've never done before. On that list was to visit a few of the Carnegie Museums, and we decided to knock out the one with all the dead stuff: The Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Before we saw the dead stuff, we gazed upon many many many rocks.

You just know that somebody saw me taking this photograph and was screaming through the security camera for me to get my kid's grubby hands off the glass. So, so sorry. (Not really.)

Then we moved on to the dinosaurs. Well, the adults moved on to the dinosaurs. The Toddler discovered TVs that changed the screen when she touched them. So she touched them a lot. A LOT.

I'm pretty sure these two would totally be making out, if only they weren't, you know, dead.

Do big horns mean . . . never mind.

These are all insects that are common to Pennsylvania and I'm pretty sure our cat Coal has eaten each and every one of these things at some point or another.

Thank ye gods of gross insects that THESE aren't the local insects because I'm positive that the giant disgusting beetle is bigger than Coal Kitty.

Someone who works at the museum has a morbid fascination with all things gross. This photo is of a hunter getting chewed to bits after killing something or other.

And this one is of the Toddler staring at one of the violently dead things, thereby ensuring a lifetime of nightmares. Thanks, Museum Workers!

This was easily Alexis' favorite display because you can't really see the plexiglass until you are right up on it and Alexis really enjoyed running into it a time or ten.

LIE ALERT! Whoever typed up "Rock Dove" and hung it above this stuffed thing was a GIANT liar. That is a rat with wings, also commonly referred to as a pigeon. Calling it a dove is like calling a Bulldog a butterfly. A BIG FAT STUPID LIE.

This little house had an animatronic lady in it who sang and told stories. Alexis developed a weird sort of crush on her and kept trying to help her find her baby and feed them all corn.

Seriously. She's trying to find corn for the baby here.

The people at this museum have issues. Serious issues. We got yelled at for Alexis being on Mr. Husband's shoulders and we got yelled at because she tried to touch the polar bear. HELLO! Children can't touch that which they can't reach. Shoulders=Good. Things at Toddler reach level=Not good.

In the itty bitty teeny tiny kids area, all things reachable are touchable, so Alexis did get to touch a bear without getting my head chewed off. Of course, she thought the fake grass was more interesting.

My favorite part was the architecture room, except for the whole thing where there were 4,285 signs saying "Do Not Touch." Does anyone realize how hard it is for me the Toddler not to touch things that are that enormous and right at her hand level?

This was a VERY cool display--it's a wishing wall. Each of the hundreds of brightly-colored ribbons has a wish printed on it. The wishes come from visitors who request whatever, the museum prints it up, and then you can walk up and pull a wish out of the wall. Alexis picked one that said, "I wish I had the freedom to choose my own religion." For what it's worth, she should have picked a different one. Alexis absolutely has that freedom.