The NAT

Afton was watching the news with me a couple of weeks ago and there was a story on a bug exhibit at The Natural History Museum. He kept asking me to take him for the rest of the week, so I decided to do just that. He use to be afraid of bugs but since becoming friends with a boy in his class named Seth, he has started to love little crawly things. Ok, maybe just rollie pollies and the occasional beetle but this is a huge improvement from the girly screams he use to screech when seeing such thing previously.

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The exhibit ended up not being as cool as anticipated. There were mostly scorpions (which are always cool when under black light) and tarantulas. Most of the bugs were dead and posed in displays. There was a great display of pinned butterflies and moths though, but overall neither of us were impressed. I guess it's obvious since I didn't take one bug picture. I did though get some cute ones of them playing on the giant metal rhino beetle. 

Rowan's face cracks me up in the above picture. I put all the stuffed bugs around her and she just looked at me dumbfounded. Right when she started to warm up to the bugs she tipped over and bumped her head on the side of the metal bug. Poor littler.

Afton had to take a picture next to the Peregrine Falcon because it's his dad's favorite bird...or so he says. He was so excited to show Nippon.

...and the beautiful blue butterfly emerged from his chrysalis. 

Rowan was such a good girl waiting patiently for her brother to finish his chalkboard masterpiece. She recovered quickly from bumping her head and enjoyed looking around and smiling at everyone at the museum. There was another exhibit on dinosaurs that had animatronic dinos that roared and made very very loud noises. Afton hated it but Rowan thought it was great. 

On the way home from the museum we decided to stop by The Cheesecake Factory where my friend Jaime works. We were hoping to surprise her but unfortunately she had the day off. I told Afton we were just going to go home but he was hungry so we stayed. I'm glad we did because I had a delicious blueberry mojito. It was a nice way to finish our day.