This week is spring break for our kiddos and my mom is in town so we kicked it off with a trip the Krohn conservatory in Cincinnati yesterday. I saw a friend post about spending the day there recently and it peaked my interest. My mom absolutely loves butterflies so it seemed like the perfect thing to do with her in town, too!
The exhibit starts with a desert exhibit and you can check out all sorts of cacti and succulents, then you head to a bonsai tree area. This was actually my favorite part of the day because Jude was so interested in it. There was a man replanting and trimming a couple of bonsai trees and Jude walked up to him and asked him what each of his tools did, how they worked, what he was doing and why he was doing it. I was very shy as a kid so it sort of made me beam with pride watching him confidently walk up and ask his questions. We all learned so much because of his curious spirit. I wonder if he’ll be an engineer or something someday – that kid is always taking things apart to figure out how they work!
After that you enter the butterfly room which feels magical. There are 2,900 butterflies in there! They handed us a little card with a scent to get the butterflies to hopefully land on… I’ll be honest, initially it was pretty discouraging because none of us had any butterflies land on our cards! It was very crowded in that room so I took my boys out to get some air and knew we’d circle back and try to catch a butterfly on the next go around. When we exited there are so many gorgeous exhibits with a waterfall and countless beautiful plants! Plus the air just felt so clean and refreshing after being in a crowded warm room with some discouraged kids!
We circled back and tried the butterflies again and had much better luck – Caedmon caught (I’m saying caught, I mean they landed on his card!) 3 different ones, Emmaline had one land on her head, and a little girl handed Jude a card with a butterfly on it that he had to try to get in his hand (he wasn’t too interested in those cards, he wanted to hold a butterfly!). I’m so glad we went back in because it ended our trip on such a high note. It was a wonderful day! For those like me with lots of little ones I don’t know that you could make it a full day activity but we did spend about 2 hours there and stopped in Northern Kentucky for lunch on our way back home so it felt like a full day of adventuring. Plus, ages 4 and under are free!
I’m eager to find more spots like this… if you have any suggestions near Lexington, KY please send them my way!
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