The Botanical Gardens

We spent the morning at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. We've never been and since there was a special butterfly exhibit, we thought we should head on over, especially since Amy and Savannah were here. The girls were happy to be outside, even though it was 90 degrees out! And the had tons of fun running all over the gardens. The children's garden was really awesome and had a wall of water that the girls got soaked in (seriously, soaked to the bone).

And like always, Cooper slept through it all. Are you seeing a pattern here? According to the Botanical Garden's Web site, "The butterflies we display come from butterfly farms all around the tropics - in Asia, Africa, Central and South America - creating financial incentives to protect tropical rain forests needed to provide butterflies for the farms." The butterflies are everywhere and they'll land right on you. One landed on my head, much to Shelby's amusement. And another landed on Shelby's back. Pretty cool eh?

The coolest part of the who exhibit was the Emergence Room. This is where all the chrysalises are unpacked, pinned and hang for all to see. Shelb and Savannah were mesmerized by the hanging chrysalises and even got to see some butterflies hatch from their chrysalises! I think they stood at the window of the Emergence Room for 20 minutes straight and watched the chrysalises. Pretty amazing for kids who don't normally sit still for 5 minutes at a time! These are some busy kiddos!


The Butterfly Exhibit was way cool. Super hot and humid inside the exhibit (but that didn't stop Cooper from sleeping), and the girls complained a lot about the heat. So we gave them our cameras and let them take pictures of the butterflies. This helped distract them and they forgot all about the heat. The butterfly pictures below were all taken by Shelby.