A Butterfly Wonderland

Oh man, I got these pictures all loaded here like a week ago, but I finally just got around to finishing this post.  

Anyway, last weekend we made it over to the Desert Botanical Garden to check out the Butterfly Pavilion with Aiden (we did this 2 years ago when I was newly pregnant with Aiden - HERE).  We were excited b/c our library has Culture Passes and we were able to get the one for 2 free admissions to the gardens (normally it would cost us $18 each!)  We only had to pay the $3.50 to get into the Butterfly Pavilion :)

Definitely the majority of the butterflies in there were Zebra Longwings.

The guide to figuring out each of the butterflies.

This one was my favorite - the Queen butterfly.

Just so pretty :)

A Julia butterfly.

We thought Aiden would really enjoy seeing the butterflies flittering around, but he didn't seem too into it :/  Trent mentioned it was too bad this wasn't a dog pavilion b/c Aiden would've eaten it right up!

A Pipevine Swallowtail.

This is probably my favorite picture I got of the butterflies.  A beautiful White Peacock!

How many Zebra Longwings can you spot??  Crazy, huh?!

Another Julia.

Trent loved this red plant.

A Buckeye (on the left) and a Julia.

That's it for the Butterfly Pavilion.  We walked through the gardens some afterward.

Love the little purple wildflowers.

I thought these looked like octupuses..haha.

Normally Aiden wants to run all over the place, so we decided not to bring the stroller, but this day he only wanted to be held :/  I think it had something to do with the heat.

A nice man took several pictures for us.  Here are just a few :)

The next ones are funny b/c Trent and I seem to be doing the same thing in them without realizing it..haha.

Again...

and again!

Loved seeing some of the blossoming cacti.

I thought this final plant looked like a stalk of asparagus..ha. Apparently it's called a Centurian b/c it only blossoms once in a 100 year timeframe.

We stopped for a few minutes in the shade before heading back out to our car.  Aiden was pooped!

If any of you have a butterfly exhibit around, I'd definitely recommend you go check it out.  It's so fun to try to capture them on camera :)

Desert Botanical Garden

We had a fun day today! I had been hearing great things about the Desert Botanical Garden since we moved here, but we haven't had the chance to go, plus admission is a little pricey at $15/person. A few weeks back though, my mother-in-law found out that today, May 6, was National Public Gardens Day so we got in for FREE! We were all mostly looking forward to the Butterfly Pavilion :)

I will say, I wasn't feeling so good and I was a bit grumpy while we were waiting in line at the beginning. At 10 in the morning it was already 100 degrees. Blah! I'm feeling a bit worried about being pregnant during these ridiculous summer months. I guess it's good that it's still pretty early in my pregnancy, so I can't complain too much.

Anyway, once we made it into the pavilion I was feeling much better! It was quite a bit cooler and more humid in there, and I guess more than half of the sun rays were being blocked by the mesh or whatever. So that was good!

I took many, many pictures of the delicate little butterflies. I just loved it!! It was so hard for me to narrow down my pictures for this post, but I didn't want to bore you guys!

We got a brochure with the possible butterflies we'd see so I'll try to name them for you :)

First we have the Painted Lady.

This one is a Zebra Longwing. I loved these ones!

In several places throughout the pavilion there were orange slices for the butterflies to snack on. In this picture you can see some Painted Ladies as well as some Malachites, which are the two butterflies towards the bottom of the picture with black and the yellow color.

We had to get a picture inside! It was way hard to get a picture with the little butterflies flying around everywhere so we just got one with one of the info boards :)

I definitely think this is my favorite picture of the day! I think it looks quite professional if I do say so myself :) To be perfectly honest I did absolutely nothing but point and shoot..haha. This is another Zebra Longwing. Gorgeous, huh?!

This orange one is called a Julia.

A Painted Lady landed on Tanis's hand! I was a little jealous. I wanted one to land on Trent or I to get a picture..haha.

A whole lot of butterflies loving the orange slices!

This is the best shot we could get of this yellow butterfly called a Cloudless Giant Sulfur. I was hoping it would open its wings, but it kept flittering around and when it would land it would just stay like this.

Another Julia.

These ones are White Peacocks. Love them! They're twins Jen!!

And one landed on me!!! Woohoo!! Look how happy I was..haha. Standing very still so Trent could capture my moment..ha

It was a Buckeye!

And that was all for the Butterfly Pavilion! We did get this silly picture afterward though :)

Then we walked around the gardens briefly. Not for long though. Blasted heat!

Some different little cacti.

On this cactus you can see some white blossoms.

And this one had some red blossoms!

In this picture I like the plant in the very front that bends all the way to the left. Do you see it??

Some pretty purple and yellow wildflowers.

I wanted a picture of the funny tall, skinny plant. Sorry I totally don't know the names of all of these plants. Tanis did, but I can't remember them!

On our way out we saw this little cactus with a single white blossom :)

It was a great morning, once we got out of the sun and into the Butterfly Pavilion of course! And at the end it was definitely nice to get into the car and turn the AC on full blast!

If you're ever down this way (maybe in March or April) definitely come check out the Desert Botanical Garden! I highly recommend the Butterfly Pavilion (did you guys wonder?)

Hope you all have some fun plans for the weekend! We're headed to Ikea tomorrow and I'm psyched!