Museums

Houston has some great museums.  We love the Museum of Natural Science and have been several times already.  There are so many beautiful things to look at, but not a lot to play with so really the little ones don’t love it as much as the rest of us.  But we still have fun.

There’s a fabulous exhibit called Biophilia that I absolutely love!  It is a collection of preserved bugs, reptiles, and birds in beautiful arrangements.  So gorgeous! 

Even octopi.

The little girls were rather taken by the turtles.
Neat story about the artist, Christopher Marley.  After wanting to relive the exhibit, I checked out his book from the library.  In his book he mentioned his two year mission in Chile at the age of 19 and I thought “no way!  What are the odds?”  Sure enough, after finding Pres. Nelson quotes on his FaceBook  
page I sent him a message saying how much we enjoyed his exhibit and how Mike says the best people serve their missions in Chile.  He even wrote back.  What fun!

There’s this great room in the museum called the Cabinet of Curiosities where you can touch everything in it.  From pottery to shells to an elephant foot to a narwhal horn (tusk). 

There’s even an empty cabinet to display your own treasure.

We went to the Downtown Aquarium.  Luckily we found a super deal on Groupon because it was a bit of a disappointment.  I guess we’ve been spoiled by great aquariums.  They did have an octopus!!  He was tucked away in his corner, but we found out if we hung out long enough he would come out and climb around like crazy for 2 minutes then hole up in his corner again.  You should have seen me run from the other side of the room when he emerged! 

There were white tigers.  Of course.

Also they had a stingray petting area!  That was awesome!  Alice didn’t want any part, though.  

Outside they had a handful of carnival rides (what a strange place).  Good thing we had that Groupon otherwise they would have cost an arm and a leg. The carousel had some neat marine animals.  We rode this several times.  (Do you like the bright Band-aid on Bridget’s forehead?  She had hit her head on the corner of our computer bench one night.  She now has a lovely little scar.)

 

A funny drop ride.  Mild enough for the little ones.  I was cracking up listening to Alice laugh and laugh.

Ferris wheel.

The last museum for the summer was the Children’s Museum.  We scored some free passes from a friend who had them and were expiring soon.  It was a crazy place, but really cool!  The kids had a lot of fun.  Taking care of animals at the vet.

Super Evelyn!

Mike and I built a dome.

The girls riding on a scooter in Vietnam.  But they weren’t sharing it with 4 other people nor did they have any fowl so it really wasn’t authentic. 

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