Robert's Birthday

With all the craziness of getting ready to move and only having one car I wasn't able to go all out like I normally do for Robert's birthday. So instead this year was kept simple. I decided to do something we wouldn't be able to do for a long while since we will be living in Utah. Balboa Park. Robert and I both really like going to Balboa park and the museums. Plus it is where we took our engagement pictures and wedding pictures. We got the Day pass and was able to pick 5 museums to go to and it included one IMAX film.











We decided to start at the Museum of Man. It is one of my favorite buidlings. They currently have the Mayan exhibit there and it is amazing to see the casts of the Stela's that the Mayan's built.

Here is Robert reading about on of the Zoomorphs found.
They are boulders carved to depict their Gods and history.

This is a Stela. Pillars carved detailing the rulers life and accomplishments.
There are usually five Stela's per ruler.



My future backyard :-)

The Stelas in the museum are actual casts of the originals. They are amazing and beautiful to look at. And even more amazing what great condition they are still in. The detail is incredible.






Next we went to the Japanese Friendship garden. It reminded me of part of the Butchart Gardens (a place we visited during our honeymoon). There was a beautiful Koi pond with different colors of Koi fish.


After that we went to the railroad museum. A favorite of both of ours. It is so cool to see what people can do. There was even model trains of the model trains that worked.

Then we ate lunch at the Galileo cafe and rested while watching the IMAX film Born To Be Wild. It was a neat film of two different women who adopt orphan elephants and orangutans and prepared them to return to the wild. I didn't realize how smart these animals are and how elephants really do have great memories.

The Reuben H Fleet center...another favorite...was packed and we didn't spend much time there, but while there Robert made a cool design on the Klaidescope maker.




Lastly we went to the Museum of Natural History. We enjoyed seeing the different animal figures. We picked some of our favorites.

My baby elephant

Robert's dream pet



This was too cute not to include

Overall it was a fun day at Balboa Park. Afterwards we went and bought Robert his birthday present (a 3DS game) and got Sonic slushies....thanks Rob and Katie for getting us hooked).