Natural History Museum - Butterflies and Dinosaurs!

On Thursday, my parents and I took the girls to the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. My parents hadn't been there in years, and the girls and I hadn't been since we went with Nan and Pop in 2011.

Soon after our arrival, we sat in an exhibit hall for some sort of dinosaur show. We weren't sure what it was going to be. Then, a woman in period garb and an English accent began speaking about her life, and we realized she was presenting the story of Mary Anning. Anning was the English paleontologist and fossil collector who worked along the Dorset coast in the early 19th Century.

Cora and I couldn't believe it - we had just been fossil-hunting ourselves less than two weeks earlier, in the same area. The museum we'd been in featured Mary Anning's work and life, and here "she" was. We spoke to the actress afterwards, and she was excited to hear of our little adventure.

We enjoyed exploring the North American mammal exhibits, and then moved on to the bird "wing" of the museum.

Violet and Cora like owls, so I thought a photo of them in front of the owls was appropriate. Cora wanted to put her arm around her sister, but Violet disagreed. Just keeping it real, people!

A special treat in the summer is the butterfly exhibit, with loads of winged beauties from many regions all together in one screened enclosure.

The Mexican Bluewings were especially friendly to us visitors, alighting on the girls and staying put, to their delight.

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa, for getting our tickets into this special exhibit!

After the butterflies, we had a quick look through the dinosaur hall, before jumping on the freeway to head home for Violet's swim lesson. More on that in the coming weeks!