Visit from NC Friends - Part 2

On Sunday morning, we woke up, ate a quick breakfast and got ready to head out to the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. We drove separately as Gray and Katie were planning on spending the remainder of the day with several family members. After a brief potty stop in Old Town, and a quick trip around the Mall (traffic was rerouted due to a local race), we finally found parking and unloaded the vehicles. We made the short walk to the museum, pausing to take a couple family pictures: 

And finally, we made it there! We met Katie's brother and his wife just inside the building and did a brief introduction. We started walking around the mammals exhibit while waiting for Katie's sister and her family to arrive. 

Chloe was getting a bit sleepy (due to day light savings and sleeping in a new place) so she rested on her mommy's shoulder:)

Nora was an angel and slept throughout the entire tour of the museum!

We eventually met Katie's sister, brother-in-law and their three children, but that made our group fairly unmanageable in size, so Jason, Reagan and I ventured off on our own for a bit. We crossed paths in the dinosaur exhibit (which Reagan LOVED).

Doing their best impressions of the T-Rex...

Pretty close, right?!

Here's Reagan sitting in a dinosaur bone!

As we tired of the dinosaurs, we decided to head upstairs to the insect and butterfly exhibits:

Reagan was touching the living beehive! They fly in through a tube that accesses the outside and you can see everything that goes on in that hive!

We paid the fee to enter the butterfly pavilion and it was really neat. There were hundreds of different kinds of butterflies.

By this point, we had been there almost 2 hours, and we were all ready to go home!

We bid farewell for the afternoon to Katie & Gray, and headed out on our own adventures in the area...a visit to the Italian Store! I can't wait to take Reagan back for another visit!