The Cockrell Butterfly Center

Liam and I went with some friends this week to the Cockrell Butterfly Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It was really neat--they have a huge glass structure where a tropical (read as very, very humid) environment for rain forest-like vegetation, a super tall waterfall and of course, hundreds of butterflies. There was even a part of the exhibit where you could see butterflies hatching from their chrysalis' and we were able to see several new butterflies as well as some that were trying really hard to hatch, so hard in fact, the chrysalis was moving!
We got to see other creatures too...fun things like maggots, scorpions, rhinoceros beetles, you know, things that little boys love.

This pic was too pretty not to post. Love my new camera!

These butterflies were lunching on a plate of fruit. Yummy...

Liam loved getting to see the butterflies so close without them flying away!

The 'coolest' location in the glass building was near the waterfall. Aaaaahhhh...

Of course, no trip to the museum is complete without a trip to the gift shop. Our attempt was to get something special related to butterflies to "commemorate" our trip. Apparently, dino-boy Traynor had other ideas. We compromised on a plastic beetle. Lovely.