Adventure of the Week

I'm not going to lie. Being at home all day can be incredibly boring. Busy, but mundane. Rewarding, but frustrating. Mind-numbing, but challenging.

So to add to my List of Home Improvement Projects and my List of Books to Read, I now have a List of Adventures for Kaitlyn and Mom.

First stop: The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

It caught my eye because they have a special exhibit of butterflies right now...and because the first Tuesday of the month is free! Kaitlyn is fascinated with butterflies so being the first Tuesday of August, we packed up the car this morning and headed out for a trek across Los Angeles. Ten and a half hours later (really only about 45 minutes of hellacious traffic that aged me about 10.5 years) we arrived.

Upon arrival, Mommy looked like this:

But Kaitlyn was in pretty good spirits. Outside of the Butterfly Exhibit:

(still kind of sleepy looking, huh?)

The butterfly exhibit was actually pretty small, though I wouldn't say it was disappointing. There were butterflies all over the place, flying around your head, landing on you, swarming around you. Kaitlyn was so excited! She kept pointing and saying "buh, buh, buh!" The big drawback: it felt like it was 972° in there. Not helping my road-raged self cool down any.

Kaitlyn checking out the butterflies on the bushes:

By the way, I don't recommend going on "Free Day" during the summer. I think all 13,982 day camps were there for a field trip! I suppose it didn't help that I was trying to maneuver my huge stroller through the masses of children. Not to mention that within moments of seeing thousands of kids running around, Kaitlyn wanted nothing to do with the stroller. So here I am, pushing a stroller with one hand, juggling Kaitlyn in the other, dodging through a web of noisy, misbehaving day-campers who won't stay in line with their class. Still, Kaitlyn was relatively well behaved, although it also could have been that her whining just wasn't loud enough considering the decibel of the screaming day-campers. 

Kaitlyn checking out the animals:

Three floors total. Some of the exhibits weren't exactly Kaitlyn-friendly. She had no interest in looking at ancient artifacts like a half of a bowl from 800 years ago. Or the science behind how a bird flies. So after seeing all the animals we could see, she started to get a little bored and antsy. 

Back into the car for us! And another 10.5 hours home (but again, really only about 45 minutes of stop-go-stop-go-stop-go-stop-go 80 mph and then slam on your brakes because there is absolutely nothing going on but traffic had to stop anyways just to drive me crazy-then stop again traffic). 

Overall, it was actually pretty fun. An adventure to say the least! Next time, no stroller. Just Kaitlyn, the camera, and me. That way, I can just hold her hand and we can run all over the place like all the other kids!