It’s a show about a future where humanity is suffering and apparently the only solution to man’s survival is to go back in time and live during the age of the dinosaurs. Sadly, I didn’t catch the premiere. We just moved to a new house and decided to do without cable for awhile. I am in the process of setting up a machine to let me stream stuff from the Internet to the TV but we aren’t quite there yet. All that moving in and extra work that comes with it has put a damper on my free time.

What I am wondering is… Once I get the streaming setup, is Terra Nova worth watching? For those who saw it, was it a good show?

Since Harrison is obsessed with Dinosaurs, we have more dinosaurs than we know what to do with.  We used to store them in red tupperware bins until we came across this neat and inexpensive bin that is made just for dinosaur toys and doubles as a play mat.  It’s from a company called Neat-Oh! and they are the creator of the ZipBin.  With this dinosaur bin, kids can store all their dinosaurs in one place and when they want to play with them, they can unzip the sides and turn it into their very own dinosaur play mat.  Half the time, Harry doesn’t unzip the sides, he just pretends the dinosaurs are inside of a cave and he plays with them that way.  Either way works great since the scenery that is printed on the bin works either way.

It’s made from a durable material that is easy to wipe down if they get it dirty and it is sturdy enough to stack multiple bins on top of each other.  They have different versions but the one we have is 13.5″ x 12″ x 8″ and the mat it makes is 29″ x 26″

We bought ours at Amazon for $12.99 (it was marked down from $17.99).  You can find it at Dinosaur Bin ZipBin

Meri Meri Roarrrrr! Dinosaur Cupcake Kit

Meri Meri is an award winning paper design company based in San Francisco.  They make all kinds of things but this Dinosaur Cupcake Kit is the first thing I have ever seen up close from them.  At least, as far as I know.

I already posted the amazing T-Rex dinosaur cake that my wife made for Harrison’s birthday but we also wanted to make something that he could take into school to share with the other kids there.  When parents send something in for their child’s birthday, at lunch, the whole class will sing Happy Birthday and share whatever was brought.  Cupcakes are always easier to deal with for the kids and the teacher so that is what we sent.  His birthday was of course, a dinosaur themed party so we wanted to carry that theme over to his school celebration.

We searched on Amazon and came up with this simple dinosaur cupcake decorations kit.  It includes 24 paper cups to bake the cupcakes in as well as cute little dinosaurs o toothpicks to stick into the top of the cupcake for decoration.  It looked great online but you never know how well these things will work in real life.  We have had some really bad cupcake paper cups that just tore way too easily.

Thankfully, the product quality matched the picture.  It’s a very cute set and was a hit at school.  The boys were running around (much to the teachers horror) holding their toothpicks and pretending they were dinosaurs.  That, of course, didn’t last long.  Something about running around with sharp little sticks made the teachers nervous :)  I highly recommend these if you are looking for something to dress up your cup cakes for your dinosaur loving kid.

You can buy it on Amazon by clicking here.

I am clear on the other side of the country in Pennsylvania so I won’t be making it out there unless I am traveling for business or vacation but there is something magical about knowing that the kids in that area have a new place to go, learn, imagine and have fun at.   I will never forget when I took my boys to the Natural History Museum in Philadelphia, they were just so damn excited!

You can see some of the dinosaurs they have on display in this quick YouTube video

The one thing that impressed me about this dinosaur digging kit when we first unwrapped it is all the different things that came with it.  It wasn’t just a digging kit, it included safety goggles, a glow in the dark dinosaur model kit and 3 smaller dinosaurs that grew when you put them in water.  I liked that it was more than just a digging kit because I had imagined that the digging wouldn’t take long and the toy would only provide a brief moment of fun.  Unfortunately for me, I was wrong.

It comes with a hard block of what is supposed to be sand and inside that block are the bones of an unknown dinosaur.  You get a small brush and a wooden digging tool to try to excavate the dinosaur bones from the block.  In my opinion, the block was much too hard.  They recommend that you wet it down with a wet sponge to make it easier but that only helped a little.  It was much too hard for a 5 year old to do.  In fact, it was hard for this 34 year old to do and really became quite the chore.  It was very dusty and messy and the biggest problem I had with it was the bones inside the block were easily broken.  Half the bones we uncovered were broken by the time we got them out of the block which mean we could not glue the dinosaur together.   I am sure they were intact when they were added to the block by the act of digging them out broke them into pieces.  Maybe I needed to have more patience but it already took us forever to get it done.

I think this toy missed the mark and would not recommend it.  My son would disagree.  Despite it being a major pain in the ass and I had to run and hide every time Harrison wanted to get back to digging out the bones, he seemed to love it.  I am not sure why as I had to do most of the digging and not having a dinosaur to put together when it was all done was a big disappointment but if you asked him today he would still say he loved his dinosaur digging kit.  For me, the only thing out of the whole kit that I was impressed with was the glow in the dark dinosaur model that came with it.  That still sits happily by his bedside.

If you want to check it out, it is available on Amazon.  You can read what others thought it by going to Dinosaur Digging Kit.

Dino Gangs premieres on Discovery channel tonight and I can’t wait to watch it.  I won’t see it tonight, I plan on recording it on my DVR and watching it with my son tomorrow.  Early reviews say it will really appear to the Dino-Geek and that’s us!  The show is all about Tyrannosaurus Rex.  For years, paleontologists believed that T-Rex hunted on it’s own but now, Dr. Phil Currie says he believes they actually hunted in packs.  This major new discovery is what this one hour special is all about.

You can read more about this show on Discovery Channel’s web site.