A Labor Day Gramma Mindy Visit!!

It's that time of year again....we have moved into Fall, and I am wrapping up the last few posts to recap the Summer...Once again, we were lucky enough that Gramma Mindy's schedule allowed for her to join us for Labor Day weekend! Between Dad's schedule change, and the lovely weather, we decided to venture out into the city for some fun! We drove down to the National Mall, and got to run around the big awesome buildings for a little bit, while trying to find something to eat....

Since nothing was open, we just headed over to the Natural History Museum for awhile, and figured we'd just eat there later...

While we saw lots of cool stuff at the museum (Lots of gems, rocks, something enormous and shiny called "The Hope Diamond", etc) I was pretty terrified as there were a lot of skeletons there...don't ask me to explain it...they just bugged me out...ugh, even writing about it now makes me a little nervous.....

Here we are entering one of the gems exhibits, and it was tripping me out that they had a 3-D display of the molecules inside of it....wild, right?

We also took some time to go see a 3-D IMAX movie about Polar Bears...it was a little big, loud, and overwhelming...it was mainly about how we are destroying the Earth, and the ice is melting, and what-not....not the world's most feel-good movie of the year, but there was some pretty cool shots of the arctic, and some adorable shots of Polar Bears...

That, and I got to wear THESE:

A newish exhibit that they had at the museum was the Butterfly Pavillion. It was basically a large room that housed TONS of butterflies that you could visit with, and observe them while they flew around you...it was SO NEAT...

The butterflies were all around us, and you could feel them as they fluttered by you...

Mom showed me a few that I could get right up close to...so beautiful...

 They had a little case where the butterflies were sleeping turning into butterflies...shhhhhh!

 I tried my best to read the information on the plaques in front of the exhibit so I could share the knowledge with Mom, Dad, and Gramma Mindy, but since I'm not quite there yet with the reading, I just figured I'd tell them what I already knew about butterflies from stories I'd had read to me, or TV that I'd seen...m

This is how close we got to get....I mean, C'mon....you're rushing right down here to see these things, right?

It took pretty much every ounce of self-control that I possess to not touch the butterflies...they were so close and so pretty....I did reach out towards a few, and they flew away towards me, which was exciting enough on its own...I don't know that I could possibly have handled actually touching one... 

One thing I desperately wanted was for one to land on me...there were a few people that had them land on them at various points, and there was one kid that had one on him practically the entire time he was in there...I was really wishing and hoping for one to land on me, and I kept holding out my arm in hopes that they would, but alas, it was not meant to be...I was told that the kid with butterflies all over him had possibly spilled some kind of juice on his pants, and the butterflies were attracted to that...

Hm...that should be easy to replicate for our next trip...

We finally managed to get some lunch at the cafeteria in the museum, and I pretended my hands were butterflies, and they kept flying on Gramma Mindy...look how fast my butterflies move around...

I also got to buy a souvenir from our trip to the museum...I chose this totally cool dinosaur head puppet....it goes rarrrrrr!!!!!!!!

As usual, Gramma Mindy watched me for an evening while Mom and Dad had a date night, and the two of us spent some time playing Sudoku together...well, I just traced the numbers while she played with the actual rules, but still it was nice of her to share her book with me.

This was probably one of our fullest weekend visits with Gramma Mindy in awhile regards to everything actually working out in a way that we did a lot of cool activities....we had a lot of fun!