Botanical Gardens and Butterflies

October 2015

Our field trip this month was to our local botanical gardens. It was a lovely day that was not too hot which is a blessing in the desert. 

They had an amazing nature Lego exhibit going on with giant Lego sculptures of birds, butterflies and other wildlife. Unfortunately for my children their mother was in charge of taking the photos and the Lego's were not what I took pictures of.

I took pictures of nature. My favorite part of the entire trip were the butterflies. They have a special section at the garden which is a tropical butterfly habitat. In one portion you get the chance to see different butterflies emerge from their chrysalis and in an portion you can walk through and admire the lovely tropical plants and actually see the butterflies they have up close. We spent quite a bit of time in this portion of the garden and poor Jeremiah freaked out when he even thought a butterfly might be getting remotely close to him. However, the one that landed on his brother was just fine to laugh about and look at.

The rest of our walking through the gardens was at least as eventful, because of the girls decided that one of the small cactus looked soft and fuzzy so she was going to pet it. I bet that you can guess how well that went. Her father and I spent at least 15 minutes if not longer careful picking out all the teeny tiny stickers. It was at that moment I decided that every mom needs to carry a roll of packing tape or duct tape in her purse at all times, because if I had had a roll we could have taped her hand and pulled out all the offending spines quite easily. Trust as a someone who grew up in the desert, this works on tiny cactus stickers, I know from personal experience.

The kids also got a kick out of the chickens we found in a pen in the back corner of the garden. Apparently they are kept to help keep mosquito's down and to help fertilize all the plants.

We ended the day with some very tired kids and a botched family photo. Poor Clarissa wanted nothing whatsoever to do with smiling for the camera. The expression on her face shows sheer torture and you would think we had been punishing her greatly by asking her to sit for five minutes and smile for the camera. Oh well I am sure that at some future time we will all get a kick out of the fact that she refused to smile right?

Our final stop was the gift shop where we bought each of the kids a t-shirt to remember to day. My personal favorite when it comes to things to buy because: hey it's clothes, they will wear them out, the shirt won't break in two seconds, and the designs are usually unique. We also bought a wooden art project for them. Each of the older three kids got a 3D wooden puzzle butterfly for paint or color and put together for art the next day and they didn't cost me any more then if I ordered them from Amazon so I was very pleased.

Over all a lovely trip and some beautiful pictures. I think I might just have to start a nature book of some kind to keep a record of all the fun animals and plants I find on our field trips.