I took the girls to the Perot Museum on the last day of May to sneak in one more visit before school let out, then we won’t be back again until September. We wanted to see the parts of the museum we missed on our last visit.

Nadia asked me to take photos of both of these to show Mike because it’s from Jiangxi Province where she and Dani were born.

We had a great time and stopped for a photo with the frogs on the way out!

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDTz6irLTTQ

My happy surprise of the day was running into Vanessa!

Amelie was due for her yearly hands and feet check up at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital so the girls and I packed up and headed for Dallas. Amelie got the all clear for another year which was a great relief. It doesn’t look like the toenails they removed are growing back so that is good news. Once we were finished we headed over to redeem a gift for a free dozen cookies from Paradise Bakery. YUM!

Popcorn is the best part of Scottish Rite.

Then we headed for the Dallas Children’s Aquarium. There were quite a few school groups in there, but we still worked our way around the place. Dani couldn’t wait to go see the stingrays, but they weren’t starting the feeding until noon and I wanted to just spend the end of our time there. This time I remembered to bring extra shirts for the girls to change into since they get splashed.

Chambered Nautilus 

Nadia and Dani fed the stingrays the little pieces of shrimp that they sell. Amelie wanted no part of it because it creeped her out the last time. She just wanted to pet the sting rays as they swam past.

“He splashed me!!!!!!!!” 

Group shot.

Learning about the Chisholm Trail.

Learning about Longhorns.

This is the official Fort Worth brand – the running W.

Nadia and Amelie loved this maze so much! They talked about it for days and how cool it was. Thanks to my friend Marti for organizing this fun day for the kids!

They “stitched” a circuit to make the light work.

Nadia wanted to go to Engineers Week at the museum so we planned to go in after picking up Dani from museum school. It was a really cool set up and they had people there from IBM, Mouser and Lockheed Martin the day that we went. There were a lot of activities for the big girls to do and not much specifically hands on for someone Dani’s age, but she still had a lot of fun.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=cooW2n2736g

The girls had to have a photo right here

At the beginning of February we finally worked it out to go to the Perot Museum using our Fort Worth Science and History Museum reciprocal membership. The place is so huge that we only made it through 2.5 floors, but we will definitely return soon.

We spent a lot of time in the area about space and the stars.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=evsrFcFE9zw

This was a cute little thing where the kids had to go to 6 different station to create their bird and then at the end they went to this screen to see the bird. Nadia loved it!

After we had been at the Perot about an hour my friend Maureen and her son Quinn met us for the rest of the visit. It was great fun!

We had passes to the Butterfly Garden in Dallas and of course I forgot about them and we scooted in on the last day. Each day at noon they release some new butterfly’s to join the ones already in the garden. The outdoor gardens are beautiful too and we enjoyed the lunch I had packed outside. They also have a place on site with “Snakes of Texas” that the girls enjoyed.

It’s next door to the Children’s Aquarium at Fair Park where we have annual passes so we went there after seeing the butterfly garden.

The kids who get to do the 3rd year of museum school go on a field trip at the end of the year to the Botanical Gardens. The trip is lead by Miss Spotted Bear who works for the museum. She is really sweet and knows a lot about trees and animals.

The kids are checking out this little pond and Miss Spotted Bear collected some of the water for the kids to look at and discuss.

They found a cool insect that she packed up to take back to the museum. (the photos I took of it were too blurry)

Feeding the turtles frozen peas.

I am glad that on our walk we didn’t come across the prior owner of this skin

I had a great time with Amelie and her class exploring the Botanical Gardens.

This little children’s aquarium has been at Fair Park since 1936 and had an $8 million remodel in 2010 and I had never heard of it until April of this year. At the beginning of May we had a free morning to give it a shot and so the girls and I loaded up and headed for Dallas. It’s really a great little aquarium with all kinds of interesting creatures and a lot from Texas waters. They also have a touch tank near the front that the girls really liked, but the absolute highlight for them was feeding and touching the sting rays! We must have spent over an hour just doing that and the girls would have happily stayed longer. On our way out I decided to go ahead and apply our admission to season passes because they were already asking me if we could come back soon.

No one else was there so the girls got an impromptu lesson on a sea turtle rescue.

The staff was really wonderful and kind to the girls. They gave us the number to call before coming so we could check to see how many field trips they had scheduled because they wanted to save us a trip if it was too crowded. So great!