Today turned into such a fun day!  I thought we’d just go spend a couple hours at the museum and then call it a day.  Turns out we had a twisty turney adventure.  It started at the Museum of Nature and Science.  As usual, on the train ride over, the boys grabbed a free newspaper so they could tear out the crossword and sudoku puzzles to work on when we have downtime.  First off we visited the outdoor butterfly pavilion.  It was cute. We loved looking at all the different kinds of butterflies, caterpillars, and chrysalis. These golden chrysalis were my favorite.  The museum was housed in a beautiful building.  We started in the Earth Hall, which was quite impressive. Front and center is the most in tact stegosaurus fossil ever to be found.  We rode the giant escalator through the metal Earth sculpture which was surrounded by a celestial map.  We explored volcanoes and earthquakes and rare metals and gems.  Then we discovered Hintze Hall. Whoah!  There was a blue whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling.  It was massive!  

Then on to the dinosaurs.  Everyone’s favorite part was a life size, animatronic t-rex.
When we were museumed out we went searching for a coke and a popsicle.  There was a grocery store not too far away and we went there.  My phone battery was running low and so I was trying not to use it to much.  We were going to go back and play in the Diana Fountain again so I looked at the directions, which were pretty easy, and we set off.  Well….the dumb compass doesn’t work that well in London and so I turned the wrong way out of the grocery store.  This led us on about a 15 min detour until I discovered the mistake.  The kids were less than thrilled.  But, finally, finally, we made it.  The kids were nice enough to blame the map instead of their mother 🙂

The coke bottles make pretty great boats until Josh’s got stuck under the bridge.  It was wedged in there pretty tight and we never got it out.  Halle also made a little 3 year old friend.  She introduced herself and then said, “Let’s hold hands!” and off they went!  They chased Blake all over the park. And in an attempt to escape them, Blake fell into the water and was soaked head to toe.  On a normal summer day this wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but a London summer day isn’t normal.  It’s quite chilly.  So poor Blake was pretty frozen for an hour or so until he dried off.

We decided we wanted a little more adventure so we set off in search of the massive toy store, Hamley’s.  We were making our way through the park when we stumbled on a man covered in parakeets.  He must have had 6 on his arms.  We were intrigued.  We stopped to watch for a minute and realized that many people were feeding and holding the parakeets.  We had some baguette left over from lunch so we pulled it out, broke some in our hands and stood perfectly still.  We were catching parakeets in no time!  It was so much fun.  Blake was having a hard time catching them.  probably because he wouldn’t hold still for very long.  But he was convinced it was because he was a bird chaser.  He had scared some pidgins a few minutes earlier and he was sure that the reason they wouldn’t land on him was because they knew that he had scared away their friends.  It was so cute and sad.  Someone who was leaving gave Josh their apple and then boys took turns with it.  The parakeets flocked to the apple!   We probably spent like 1.5 hours playing with the birds.  I’m sure it won’t be the last time.

Finally we made it to Regent street and Hamley’s! Wow!  This place was awesome.  7 floors of every toy you could ever imagine.  Actually, every over priced toy you could ever imagine.  The only thing we could afford were the little lego guards. Good thing they were awesome!
By this time it was 8:30 and we were starving.  After a quick stop at 5 Guys we were headed home.  I though the kids were going to die when they saw this sign:

We made it home and fell exhausted into bed.