{Bucket List} A Trip to the Natural Science Center

  As the summer is coming to a close, I wanted to share a few things that I never quite got around to blog about. So bare with me over the next couple of days friends as I recap some of my favorite summer memories and of some of the Holt family's summer fun!

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If you read our summer bucket list that I posted right after school ended you may remember that this summer we had big plans for Harper. We had planned to take her on quite a few "field trips" while I was on summer vacation and Kevin was off. We had plans to visit the Children's Museum, the Ashboro Zoo, and the Natural Science Center to name just a few. Despite our high hopes, the weather just did not cooperate with us. On the days Kevin was off or we didn't have plans, it was always either super hot or it was raining and neither made for a good combination of a family fun day with a toddler. But just when I thought Harper wouldn't get to go on any field trips this summer we caught a break! We had the perfect Saturday filled with sunshine and mild temperatures.

On August 16th,  the hubs, Harper, and I loaded up in my parents' Suburban and hit the road to spend the day with them. It just so happened to be my Mom's birthday that day so as per her request we hit up Country Barbeque for some tenderloin biscuits before making our way to the Natural Science Center. As a kid I can remember going to the Natural Science Center and loving every minute of it. I loved it so much in fact that I even visited it back in college with some of my teaching buddies. Since the last time I'd been a lot had changed. They'd added on an aquarium, had more animals in the petting zoo, and changed out each of the exhibits. Needless to say, I was as excited about our visit as Harper was!

Our first stop was the new aquarium. The aquarium was a smaller version of Ripley's but had quite a large selection of fish, sharks, stingrays, and penguins. The penguins were by far Harper's favorite. She was obsessed with them and was not keen on the idea of leaving them.

After checking out the aquarium we toured the health exhibit then made our way to the dinosaur exhibits. While in the dinosaur exhibits Kevin thought it would be funny to feed Harper to the dinosaurs. What a crazy dude! It kind of backfired on Kevin though because Harper wanted to climb up on the dinosaurs after that! But thankfully a quick photo with Papa as a pirate (their featured attraction is a pirate show at the Natural Science Center this summer) made her forget about the dinosaurs and move on to better things.

Our last stop of the day was the zoo. Growing up, the petting zoo was always my favorite so we headed there first. The petting zoo includes horses, llamas, goats, donkeys, hogs, and a variety of other animals. Unfortunately, the only animals wanting to cooperate and not sleep in the shade were the goats. But Harper didn't mind. She just thought they were dogs and kept shouting "ruff ruff" at them as she petted them.

After hitting up the petting zoo, we made our way around the rest of the zoo to see the meerkats, lions, kangaroos, and monkeys. We also went to the reptile center to see the snakes, lizards, and turtles.

By 1 o'clock Harper was worn out as it was an hour or so past nap time. So instead of making our way through the rest of the museum we called it a day and headed out. Guess that just means we'll have to go back again some other time!

If you're ever in Greensboro, be sure to check it out!