Afternoon adventure

We went to the museum after lunch for some much needed time away from our half-packed house. Today was a perfect day for it because the rain is taking a break (it's a rainy, rainy week 'round these parts) and yesterday's storm cooled things off nicely so it wasn't too hot. The museum wasn't too crowded, either, because half of it is closed. 

One of the exhibits houses some endangered red wolves as part of a breeding program. They finally saw some success and a litter of pups was born a couple of months ago. Puppies sound a lot like children because—wouldn't you know it?—those little wolf pups managed to sneak out of their enclosure!

While they pose no threat to people (yet), they closed off the wilderness area while they searched for them. They found a couple on the outside of the fenced area on Tuesday evening. Their dad was trying to feed them regurgitated meat through the fence when they were spotted.

The last little pup had to weather yesterday's storm all on her own—the torrential downpour and lightning-filled sky must have been frightening for such a little thing! She, too, found her way back to the enclosure on her own this morning (though she had to be helped back inside). 

I think they spent the rest of the day looking for pesky puppy escape routes and sealing them up.

Anyway, because half the museum was closed off to visitors a lot of people chose not to visit the museum. But we did! Even though we didn't get to see the baby wolves we still had a fun time. 

We visited the farm:

And the butterfly house:

The kids found the recently emerged atlas moth rather impressive:

We stopped by Hideaway Woods, and the kids all ended up soaking wet. Of course. But before that, Rachel lifted Zoë onto this huge tree trunk and then left her there. Here's Zoë screaming at Rachel to come back ("Aicha! Gack! Aicha! Aaaaaichaaaaa!"):

And here's Rachel saying, "Oh, yeah! Her."

Here are the girls picking their way down the stream (Benjamin is a little farther upstream):

Zoë wore herself out and fell asleep in the car mid-snack during rush-hour traffic (her hand is inside the bag, clenching a cracker):

As I was unloading everything from the car (there are always so many random things in our car: wet clothes from the creek, plates from Sunday's rushed lunch, the diaper bag, the stroller, a pair of winter boots for some odd reason, wrappers from snacks, my purse...) our next-door neighbour stopped by with a bouquet of peonies. The kids had mentioned that my birthday was coming up and she's just the sweetest neighbour ever so she couldn't not do something! We sure have been lucky to have such great neighbours!

Benjamin wasn't sure the flowers were real because they looked so much like the tissue paper flowers Miriam showed him how to make on Mother's Day.