Raynor Shine: Downtown Raleigh

My family is visiting for the weekend, and Aunta made sure to come equipped with a schedule of activities! I absolutely love it when she plans outings for us...she finds some of the neatest things for us to do. Then to top it off, she's kept the activities a secret. I love surprises!! So this weekend is going to be a lot of fun.

Today, Aunta the tour guide took us all downtown. We started the morning with breakfast at Big Ed's. For those of you who've never been to Big Ed's in City Market, you're missing out. The food is great and the atmosphere has a nostalgic kind of vibe to it. It's just a cool place to go. Isaac and Madeline both enjoyed the special breakfast. Isaac was very interested in Opa's hot coffee, and found that jelly and creamer containers make really awesome building blocks. He wasn't too sure about the guys in the band out front, but he eventually warmed up to the guy with the drums.

After breakfast, we went to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. Isaac and Madeline (and all of the adults) really enjoyed the museum. Isaac's favorite part was watching the lady remove the brand new just hatched butterflies from the exhibit window. We had a close call when one of the butterflies on the glass (turns out he didn't see it there at first) opened it's wings and scared him to death. But have no fear, mommy was there (to catch the terrified little boy before he through himself off the bench and onto the floor)! We had a little talk about the butterflies and how that particular one didn't mean to scare him and he was good as new and had his face pressed back against the glass in no time.

We also visited the side of the museum that has all the live snakes. I am scared to death of snakes. I don't like them, I don't have a use for them, they give me the creeps, and yes they will make me scream and act like a little sissy girl. Unfortunately his daddy has the same fear, including the sissy girl scream. :) But when Isaac was born, I told myself that I'd teach him what is dangerous, I'd teach him to respect the dangers, but I'd do my best not to teach him to be afraid of things. So, mommy sucked it up today and marched right up to the that wall of snakes with Isaac and acted like they were the coolest thing ever. (For the record, he wasn't with me when I happened upon the large cage that I thought had cool frogs in it only to come face to face with a giant green snake. Here I jumped back and cussed under my breath to turn around to find Brian laughing at me. Ugh...snakes!) I didn't get any pictures of Isaac with the snakes....I was too busy being brave for my little man. Maybe next time!

The most entertaining place Isaac and Madeline found in the museum was the windows under/behind the exhibits, and they were happy to share it with Daddy and Uncle Mark!