Insectarium Adventures

Our three little bugs at the Dry Dock waiting for the ferry in New Orleans. We would have had photos from the jumpy place, but it closed just a few minutes after we finally made it over there....oh well, the kiddos needed the rest of a car trip anyway. No one slept very much the night before.

Poor sweaty little Bree. Across her eyes, she looks just like I did as a baby, it will be fun to see how her face changes as she grows up.
The Audubon Zoo has a dinosaur exhibit going right now and the kids visited with one of their PR reps. Its eyes moved, which REALLY freaked them out. Carly was convinced it was real and Max was sure it was going to come eat us. Fortunately no one became lunch and when all three kiddos screamed after the dino roared, the sweet lady in the white shirt told them that he was roaring at her because she didn't eat all of her veggies. =)
The entrance to the Insectarium...soooo cool. Those chandeliers look like Venus Flytraps!

Hahahahah Maggie's face!!! These are the banana slugs. Super yuck, but I swear they were Carly's favorite part of the whole day. She's drawn me several pictures of these gross things and has asked if she can have one as a pet.

There is a walk-through exhibit that shows life underground...this is a giant earthworm!

See? With lots of lovely maggots and random other insect larvae crawling around the dirt behind her. Other parts have a moving spider - very scary! - and a cool hologram set into the ceiling that looks like a bird trying to get a snack.

The Maggie and Carly checked out the beetles. Poor beetles might never be the same.

Then Carly and Max petted a cockroach. Carly kept trying to get me to do it, and I had to balance the line between absolutely not touching that thing at all and not letting her on to the fact that there is no way I'm going to touch a bug.

There is a pretty butterfly room with a koi pond - it was really fun.

I love this photo

There were a couple of these big blue butterflies and they were really friendly! The butterfly lady told us that most butterflies only last 10-14 days as adults, which made us kind of sad that they have to spend so much time as caterpillars and then only a few days being beautiful butterflies.

Silly Bree! She was putting Max's Marine Corps hat on her head on our way back to the car. What fun times!