Butterfly Festival

Today we went to the Festival of Butterflies at Powell Gardens. We hadn't been there before, probably because it is in the middle of nowhere and it's the nowhere that's in Missouri so not very close to our house. But we found it worth the drive and we will probably go again at some point.

There were some really beautiful butterflies like this:

And really, there were a lot of all kinds of butterflies: beautiful, scary, small, huge, exotic, ordinary. There were a crazy number of butterflies. And the kids enjoyed that. But the hit of the day for them was definitely the hands-on part of the festival:

Joshua got to pet a caterpillar at the "Caterpillar Petting Zoo".

The butterflies in the kid area seemed used to being handled so it was possible to have them sit on your hand. Clara seemed pretty indifferent, but this was probably the highlight of Joshua's day. He was so enthralled, he pretty much refused to even look at the camera or anything else.

This is the first time we used our new wagon and it worked really well for this trip. Hannah seemed completely content in it and the other kids were able to get in or out easily and it gave them a place to eat their snacks and drink their water and to carry all the stuff (I got a really big one because I wanted it to fit everything we needed plus all three kids). Hannah wasn't really into the butterflies so I would say eating her Cheerios and riding around in the wagon were probably the highlight of the trip for her. Side note --- Hannah today is the exact same age (10 months, 8 days) as Clara was when Hannah was born which means Clara is twice her age today.