Excursions!!

When I was pregnant, I've had dreams of taking my son to museums, parks, and zoos. It's been a dream to be able to experience places like that with him and the last couple weeks are exactly what I needed. When he was a newborn and it was so hard sometimes just to leave the house, it was very hard to imagine that someday I would actually be able to go on day trips without it being so scary and hard.

With the nice weather, my play group, the 'Bradley Babes,' have decided to make weekly field trips with the kids. A couple tuesdays ago, we checked out the Butterfly Exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. We are incredibly lucky to live so close to world-renowned museums, I would miss this terribly if we ever leave this area. This specific exhibit is free on tuesdays so my friends and I got there early to get our timed entry tickets (it's a small exhibit so they have to let people in in waves). We bopped around the museum for a while (Julian LOVED the bones exhibit, who knew?!) but by the time we finally got into the Butterfly Exhibit he fell asleep on me and wasn't able to enjoy the butterflies. Too bad...a reason to go back! After the exhibit my friends and I headed to the Navy Memorial Plaza downtown to let the kids play around the fountain and crawl around. It was such a gorgeous day, we didn't want to leave quite yet! Here are the pictures for that day...it was so much fun!

Butterfly Exhibit

A few days later, we met my friend and her son, Laura and Miles, at Frying Pan Farm Park in Herndon, VA to check out the baby animals that were born this spring. Despite it being a cool day, we still had a great time seeing the baby piglets and riding the tractor pull. Julian was such a trooper despite being incredibly tired. Frying Pan Farm Park is modelled after the original dairy farm from the early 1900s. Did you know that Fairfax County was the largest producer of dairy in the entire state of Virginia in the 1920s? Anyways, it was a very fun day and here are a few pictures from that day.

A few days after this trip, we visited the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, VA. We are so lucky to have such wonderful parks so close to home! We brought a picnic lunch then strolled around the park to see the various plants. There is a huge pond with big carp and turtles, but Julian was so tired that he fell asleep once we settled in by the pond. Go figure. Again, another reason to go back! He did enjoy seeing all the trees and flowers, though, before passing out. Here he is checking out the ducks.