The Butterfly Palace

Today we took Abbie to The Butterfly Palace in Branson.  It was really neat and she loved telling her daddy how a butterfly tickled her arm when it flew past her.  (It actually tried to land on her but she kinda freaked out.)

They had a little “rainforest” that you could walk through that had a lilypad pool (see below) that you could walk on.  Abbie was trying to catch the fish and flowers that were projected on to the carpet.

The butterfly room was really neat.  There were lots of butterflies (mostly shipped in from tropical locations every week) everywhere!  You can see them flying around in the picture below if you look closely.

Abbie was enamored by the butterflies.  She loved pointing to them all and watching them fly around, but it scared her a little bit if they got too close so she was ducking and running a few times, which was a little entertaining.

(12 weeks pregnant and I look and feel fat.  Ew.)

They had lots of butterflies, but they also had LOTS of orchids, which were beautiful!  I love orchids!  And I’ve never seen so many kinds!  The room was like 90% humidity and like 90 degrees, so the flowers apparently like that climate.  (No wonder mine always die..)

I took lots of pictures of the butterflies.  Here are a few of my favorites.

They also played a movie, that we only watched part of thanks to my dad getting a phone call and Abbie, who didn’t want to sit still for any significant amount of time.  But of the part I did see, it said that butterflies on average have a lifespan of about a month, except for some that migrate from as far as Canada to Mexico in the fall to mate and then they fly all the way back up to the States and Canada.  That process takes about a year to do, so those ones live longer and scientists don’t know why they live longer or migrate to Mexico yet.  It’s hard to imagine a butterfly (monarch to be exact) flying all the way from Canada to Mexico.  They said they fly around 12kph (around 7.5mph).  Crazy!

And they had a little frog/turtle area.  Abbie liked watching the turtles move around.  They also had a mirror maze, which Mark would have LOVED!  It was pretty big and it took me a while to get Abbie and I out of it, but I finally figured out that you went out the same way you came in.  I thought there was a separate exit.  Oops.

After we finally un-latched Abbie from this bear she found, we headed out.  We went to this HUGE fabric/ quilting store, which might have been the highlight of this trip for me, but more on that later.  =)  Overall, The Butterfly Palace was a success!!

The heeby-geebies

Today Brittney and I got a TON done on the house.  We organized both the storage rooms downstairs and found homes for the majority of the junk in the big downstairs room.  I only have 4 boxes left in my bedroom and maybe 5-6 boxes upstairs and 8-ish boxes downstairs to go.  And the kitchen.  But I can’t go forward on that until I get the hutch, which should be delivered on Monday, I believe.  I hope it fits where I want it to fit in the kitchen, otherwise I’m going to have to rearrange.

Anyway, as we were reorganizing, I picked up the plastic container the dog food was in and this NASTY thing crawled out from under it.

I got this off of the web, because there is no way in hell I was letting that thing crawl around while I grabbed the camera.  I told (maybe it was closer to “screamed at”) Brittney to pick up Abbie while I ran for a shoe.  Ew.  Ew.  EW!!  Do I feel things crawling on me as we speak?  Yes.  Am I most likely going to have nightmares about the stupid thing?  Probably.  I.  Hate.  Bugs.  And I hate bugs even more when they’re in my house.  Yuck.  Where is my husband when I need him?  By the way, if you’re wondering, it’s a house centipede.  Ew.

Today I cooked for the first time since Mark left.  It’s not nearly as much fun cooking for one (and a half), so usually when he’s gone I live on toast and cereal (and Oreos, who am I kidding?).  But tonight I got a steak out of the freezer, and made beans and new potatoes.  By the way, Abbie loves steak.  She’s my little carnivore.  The little turd didn’t want to take a nap today, but after the 3rd try and 20 mins of her screaming, she finally fell asleep for 45 mins.  Hopefully she’ll sleep through the night.

I still feel things crawling on me.  Gross.