National Museum of Natural History

Ok, I'm baaaaaaaack. I just got so far behind, that the task of catching up on all of our goings-on was a daunting task. But, here I go. I'm going to schedule one entry to post every day until I'm caught up. After the long wait, I hope I don't disappoint...

As everyone knows by now, Peyton is in love with all things animals. Back on June 12, we took him (and Hunter, of course!) to the National Museum of Natural History down in Washington, DC. We decided to drive into the city, rather than take the Metro like we normally would because we figured that it would be a little tough to navigate the train with Hunter's big stroller. We didn't tell Peyton where we were going, because 1. he wouldn't even really understand what it was, and 2. he would talk non-stop about animals for the entire drive (and honestly, that gets annoying.)

We arrived at the museum just after it opened at 10 am. The first exhibits that we visited were those about sea life. There were bones of various whales hanging from the ceiling. There was also a life-size replica of a whale hanging from the ceiling and it was huge! Here, Peyton is looking at plankton that whales typically eat.

As Peyton walked by each different item in the entire museum, he asked, "Mommy, what's that?" or "Daddy, what animal is that?" or "What does that do?" I loved his curiosity. Here he is feeling a portion of a "crusty patch" that grows on a right whale's skin. He was very hands-on throughout the day.

After spending lots of time learning about sea creatures, we headed to the dinosaur exhibits. Peyton pointed to this diagram on the wall and told us what each dinosaur was called - and he was RIGHT each time.

For some reason, Peyton was a little scared of the dinosaur bones, so he just would not pose for a picture in front of any of them. But, I did get this picture of my boys in front of a stegosaurus replica. (Notice the boys are wearing their dinosaur bone shirts! Good work getting them dressed, Kyle.)

Here is T. Rex!

In the atrium of the museum, there is a life-sized elephant as the centerpiece. Here are Peyton and I in front of it.

Next we were onto the mammal section. There were lots of lots of animals like these. We hung out in here for a long, long time. Peyton could not get enough! He liked the little dear and the big moose.

Here's Peyton with one of his favorite animals, the okapi. He loves to stump people with its existence, because we've found that most people have never heard of okapis.

Hunter checked out the little kangaroo. He pointed to the pouch and said, "Hey, if I were a kangaroo, I'd be in there right now." My kids are so smart. Hehe.

After prying Peyton away from these animals, we started to check out the gems, but Peyton had to go to the bathroom, and we never got back to see the Hope Diamond. In another section of the museum, we learned that the world population at around noon, EST was about 6.7 billion. It seemed to increase about 7 people per second.

The next section that we checked out was dedicated to ancient China. Here is Kyle with his new BFFs.

Hunter finally passed out after getting a little cranky from being tired.

We looked at a bunch of different minerals. Peyton was still curious and wanted to know everything about them.

After looking at more bones of various animals, we went into the bug area of the museum. Here is Peyton acting like an ant in an ant tunnel.

He was looking at spiders in the picture below.

I'm not really sure what he's standing on in this picture, but he looked cute, so I thought I'd include it.

We saw pretty much everything in the entire museum, it was getting late, and our feet were getting tired so we headed home. I love that Peyton loves to learn and it is fun to see his passion for animals.