New Paleontology Hall and the Butterfly Center

Our family museum membership is about to expire, so I thought that would make a great summer outing before we wrap things up before school. The Houston Museum of Natural Science recently opened up a new paleontology hall, making it now one of the top in the nation. So we went to check it out.

The thing I liked most about the new hall was that in addition to dinosaurs there were skeletons of all kinds of prehistoric animals. Then there were murals of pictures so you could get an idea of what they looked like. Here is a giant sloth.

Next I think was a sabertooth tiger (though maybe I wrong because it doesn't really look like one) and I have no idea what the other animal is. (And yes I realize these animals look a little R-rated but I find the big round thing to be interesting.)

The giant shark - megalodon I think is what it was called. That is one big mouth!

And the dinosaurs, of course!

Ashley of course we had to chase all around there and not lose her. Reagan we had to keep track of as well, but even though Ashley has slowed down significantly from her toddler days, she still wants to blow through the museum and not stop to look at things (maybe she gets it after me? I actually don't like museums generally, and though I stop and look, I usually move on pretty fast!).

Then it was onto the butterfly center. The butterflies cooperated nicely for us...

And each girl had at least one butterfly land on her.

But the highlight was when one landed (and stayed) in Ashley's hair!

I think her super blond hair and her red pony tail and dress really caught the butterfly's attention!

We ended the day seeing an IMAX movie about the coral reef. It was really more about how civilization is ruining the coral reefs. I could have done without the main message and had a little more fish and beauty. It was a mix though, just thought they overdid it on the message. The point of the IMAX is to SEE something neat, not hear gloom and doom, though they did go into how the reefs tend to rebuild in other man-made locations in the sea. So it ended on a positive note but was just kind of weird.

And there you have it - our day at the museum.