Sushi Disaster and Giant Spiders

25. Go to the Butterfly Pavilion

After C's gym class yesterday morning we took a trip to the Butterfly Pavilion. For those of you who aren't familiar with the place, they have a giant room full of plants, ponds, turtles swimming around, and butterflies flying everywhere around you. They also have their Crawl-A-See-Em exhibit containing beetles, bees, and spiders. You can pet a cockroach or hold Rosie the tarantula in this room. Every mother's dream... (dripping with sarcasm if you didn't catch that). We decided on a whim to go yesterday not knowing that it was actually the reopening celebration of the Crawl-A-See-Em room that was just renovated. Last time I was there (many years ago) it was just a boring room with white walls and terrariums lining the walls. As you can see from the lovely picture above with C looking at a terrifyingly huge and disgusting spider that could probably eat me, the room is now bright green, the terrariums are more exciting and spaced out, and it really has a better atmosphere all together.

So I have this really sad fear of moths because they dive bomb my face all the time and it totally freaks me out. Because butterflies are so similar I am also slightly afraid of them. I went into the butterfly room telling myself that I would not freak out about the butterflies flying all around me and was immediately greeted by a butterfly flying right at me. Of course it flew right around me instead of attacking me like it's dirty likeness would have done, but it still managed to freak me out. I mentally berated myself and tried to put my fears aside. Having a son, I really am going to have to get over my fear of bugs. That first butterfly was the only one that tried to psyche me out and I immediately started to enjoy the beauty of the exhibit. It's a very unique place and I recommend that everyone check it out at some point. C seemed to like it as well.

They also have a play/interactive room where the kids can play games, pet more bugs, learn about butterflies, the rain forest, etc. and climb on bug figures in the play area. We spent a little bit of time in there while C stuck fabric butterflies in this big tube and a fan made them twirl around just like butterflies do and eventually fly out of the top and drop back on his head.

84. Make my own sushi

After leaving the Butterfly Pavilion we headed over to the Asian marketplace right up the street to pick up ingredients to make sushi. This was our very first time trying to make sushi as well as the very first time trying to hunt down the different ingredients, including seaweed. Well, I assume we would just see it somewhere if we walked around. I also thought it would be a refrigerated item. I was incorrect on both counts. After walking around aimlessly trying to find various ingredients in a store where everything is written in another language and we were the only non-Asian customers, we decided to leave and try again at a standard grocery store. While C was sleeping I ran over to Bed Bath and Beyond for a sushi rolling mat, then made my way to Walmart to pick up our missing ingredients. I quickly found them and headed home.

We stuck with California rolls containing brown rice, seaweed, avocado, cucumber, and imitation crab meat.  Here they are:

But don't be fooled. I never did get the hang of rolling the sushi. These three were our prettiest ones. What you can't see is the disaster of a sushi roll hiding behind my soy sauce bowl. But hey, they tasted great! Here is what they REALLY looked like:

96. Re-Read The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby - Wiki

I really enjoyed reading The Great Gatsby in high school English class and it is being made into a movie that is set to start playing in theaters May 2013 (I just this very minute learned that they delayed the release. Sad day...). Because it has been so long since I've read it, I wanted to refresh myself with the book. Back in the day before I had a little munchkin in my life I used to read a new book every other day. I think the longest it ever took me to finish a book was a week. NOW it takes me months just to finish a book. My solution? Audio books! It takes me 20-30 minutes to get to work every morning and 20 minutes to get back home after work. That is plenty of time to "read". So I checked out The Great Gatsby from the library onto my phone and listened to it on my way to work. I still enjoyed the story the second time around but it was definitely a totally different experience exploring Fitzgerald's use of colors, analyzing the characters, and really digging into the book's themes.