Monkeys and Prairies and Paintings, Oh My!

Wednesdays are my favorite days! We don't have school so the boys and I are free to do whatever we want. Yesterday, we went to Safari School at the zoo with our friends Amanda and Adam and Kate and Henry. Safari School was all about monkeys, like this mandrill, this week.
The boys learned that monkeys have tails but that apes do not and that only monkeys who live in South America have prehensile tails because they live in trees! We met a couple of mandrills and their zookeeper Rachel. She fed them worms in a paper sack, which they loved! After Safari School, we like to go have lunch with our friends but no one could join us this week, so we headed over to Cafe Express at the MFAH. Yum! The boys love the art museum and we hadn't been there in months, so we were due for a visit. I was so impressed with how well behaved the boys were, especially since we had already spent an hour and a half at the zoo! We looked at all our favorite paintings and sculptures and even found our way back to some Jackson Pollock paintings, which fascinated the boys. Will kept walking through the museum saying, "I just love these paintings." That's my boy!

My main reason for visiting the museum was to see my friend Jaime's exhibit, Coastal Prairies: Houston's Heartland, which is up in the lobby of the Law Building for only three days as part of the museum's Florescence flower show. Jaime and some other dedicated volunteers have worked so hard on this exhibit for an entire year and I knew we couldn't miss seeing it! We were looking at all the prairie plants when guess who showed up? Jaime was bringing some laminated cards to the museum after his original set walked away and we just happened to be at his exhibit when he arrived. He had hidden prairie birds in the exhibit and the kids were supposed to look at the cards and find them all. The boys had so much fun finding all the birds and I'm so glad our timing worked out so that we were there when Jaime was around. He truly brings nature and the prairie to life and he is so passionate about what he does! Plus my boys absolutely adore him!Jaime's exhibit is amazing but today is the last day it will be at the MFAH before it starts traveling around to schools to teach about Texas's prairies. Check it out if you have the time. It is well worth the visit!