A Trip Downtown

This morning, the girls and I decided to take a spontaneous trip downtown.  School starts on Monday, and today was going to be a beautiful day with nothing planned, so we packed some food, got a quick plan together and headed into Washington.  During our picnic lunch on the National Mall, we were visited by quite the curious squirrel.  Nina got a kick out of how tame the squirrels were, and at one point, had a little stand-off with the one that wanted our lunch.

   

After our lunch we went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  One of the first things we did once we got there was get our tickets to enter the butterfly exhibit.  We got to go inside an enclosed greenhouse with tons of beautiful butterflies and exotic flowers.  The variety of butterflies was amazing!  Nina and Lyla were very excited!

 

Because of her green shirt, a particular species of butterflies really gravitated towards Nina. They landed on her shoulder and even on her head! 

    

  

Nina was loving that the butterflies were attracted to her, but not so for Lyla. In her brown tank top (with butterflies on it though), she was not at all an attraction to the butterflies, but Nina felt bad for her and made sure Lyla got to hold one.

  

We checked out the Hope Diamond, the animal photography exhibit (awesome!), the ocean section, the mammals section, and of course, the dinosaur section.

 

Apparently the dinosaurs weren’t the only monsters in the museum today!

On our walk back to the car, we passed some pretty gardens, and Lyla stopped for a quick picture even though they were both tired.  Nina wasn’t interested in putting forth any more energy for a smile at that point, but we made it back home before rush hour traffic started, and it ended up being a great little spontaneous trip.  Both girls told me several times what a fun day they had!