Luckily Got Lucky: Trip to Denver

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Trip to Denver - Butterfly Pavilion

July 26, 2016 - Butterfly Pavilion

Darwin and I first learned of the Butterfly Pavilion when we read the book Heaven is For Real. When we started planning our trip to Denver, this was the first stop we knew we wanted to make with our kids, and we're so glad we did!

We got there around lunch time so we started our visit by having a picnic on the grass. When we were almost done eating we saw a wild rabbit run across the grounds. This was the first of many wild rabbits we saw on our visit!

Our cute girls outside the Butterfly Pavilion

Silly girls!

Looking at something creepy! :)

A really cool leaf bug.

A really big beetle eating some watermelon.

This was a big highlight of our trip--we got the opportunity to hold a tarantula named Rosie! Daddy was the bravest and went first.

Petting some Madagascar hissing cockroaches. Apparently they're the cleanest cockroaches in the world. And they're BIG!

Savy checking out a big tarantula safe behind glass :)

Mommy went next! I had to get over some serious fears to talk myself into doing this! Rosie was actually super soft and light. It was actually really pretty cool to hold her. I'm glad I did it!

Then I got to pet the cockroaches too. They were really smooth!

Neither one of the girls wanted to hold Rosie at first so we moved on to other things. Savannah was brave enough to pet the cockroaches though. I was so proud of her!

This exhibit was really cool. They had a beehive displayed so you could see what goes on inside the hive.

They marked the queen bee with a pink dot on her abdomen so she was fairly easy to spot.

After checking out the beehive and before we moved to a different area, Savannah decided she wanted to hold Rosie. She wanted Mommy to come with her, and I did it gladly. We were so proud of her for trying something new that was a little bit scary! Way to be brave, baby girl!

I'm glad she seemed to enjoy holding Rosie for a minute. She was very proud of herself too!

We tried to talk Aurora into it, but she politely passed this time around. We certainly weren't going to force her to do it.

(A few days later she wanted to go back and hold Rosie, but the Pavilion was closing as we pulled up and she didn't get the opportunity this trip. Next time for sure!)

So proud of the stickers she got for petting the cockroaches and for holding Rosie :)

After Savannah held Rosie we moved to the the aquarium area. This urchin was really cool.

Big hermit crab!

After the aquarium area we went into the butterfly room. It was really cool because there are hundreds of butterflies in there with any number of them flying around at any given moment. We just stood still and watched the butterflies for a few minutes before taking a look around the rest of the room.

Cute picture of Talmage. He is very vocal sometimes :)

And now for a bunch of pictures of butterflies!

Mommy and Talmage looking at a pretty yellow flower :)

This was one of our favorites. It's called an Owl Butterfly because their spots closely resemble owl eyes :) We saw lots of these butterflies!

We were excited to see a turtle too!

Savannah loves purple! She loved that there were so many butterflies around this purple sponge. (Even though we saw a bunch around a pink sponge earlier. Cute girl.)

They have an area with a whole bunch of chrysalises ready to hatch. One employee told us they have chrysalises shipped to them from butterfly farms all over the world. She said it would take over 20 football fields of foliage to feed all of the caterpillars they would need to keep up the number of butterflies they always have on hand at the Butterfly Pavilion. Cool facts!