butterflies

we did take a half day off of home making to go into the city & hit the smithsonian.

the beginning of the day was a joke. just one of those things. we got lost going to costco because the exit we wanted was closed & i don't ever know where i am & then completely forgot the prints that were the real reason for going anyway. later when we jumped on the metro we thought we'd try a switch over to a different line to get to our stop rather than stay on the blue line & go around the potomac. what since we're such experts? well it proved to be a really. stupid. move. our adventurous streak was clearly just idiocy.

but chief took a half day of his own so he could come! yay! i adore his flex scheduling.

the natural history museum is directly across the street from the station stop. awesome.

gramvi was very happy to be around these two for a week.

how pretty is that old smithsonian building behind us?

my mom had heard about this live butterfly exhibit that was really worth checking out so that was the first on the agenda. it was RAD.

you go into this rather small, enclosed, humid green house-ish place with glass rooms on each end to ensure the butterflies don't escape. there were hundreds in there!

one in particular took a liking to our babe.

it was there for literally over 10 minutes. i can't explain why but it started making me nervous. haha. everyone was asking if they could photograph my baby. so maybe you've already seen this... i didn't realize how perfect her outfit was for butterfly hunting: a flower on her head & actual purple butterflies on her shoes. classic!

some of the butterflies literally had an 8 inch wing span!! the employees actually have to check your clothes when you leave to make sure a moth or butterfly isn't hiding somewhere. it was magnificent.

aust & i had been excited to show elles the dinosaurs. she is one big dino fan. everything was 'ta-rex! roar!!' i knew quite a few dinosaur species & which time period they belonged to, etc. thank you dinosaur train. :)

this is merely one of my favorite shots of all time:

you are welcome siblings. bahahaha!

austin kept saying how much he would love to take a few days with me to go through each museum & read, see, & learn every little thing. sans kids. :) for now; one more site down, way too many to go.