A Morning in the Gardens

Finally!  Now that tax season is over, life can return to normal, and we can all have some fun again!  Last Saturday, while Ryan was doing a service project with our church, Liz, the girls and I went down to the Botanical Gardens.  We bought an annual membership when we went in November to have our family pictures taken.  We visited in December to see the lights, but we haven't been back until Saturday.  I really wanted to make it down sooner to see all the tulips in bloom, but unfortunately, that didn't work out.  However, it was a beautiful day, so the four of us headed down and enjoyed a wonderful morning together.

At the entrance.  This was the first fountain I momentarily thought they might fall in; there were a couple of them during the morning.  Thankfully, they stayed dry the whole time.

 I made them pose for this picture; you can see how thrilled they were about that.

 This frog made us all smile.

 Walking through the archway to the huge greenhouse.

 The girls enjoyed seeing all the little (poisonous) frogs just inside the greenhouse entrance.  They were amazingly vibrant colors.  Luckily, they were inside glass aquariums.

Walking along one of the paths in the greenhouse, and the girls enjoyed stopping to see the little fish under the bridge.

 I thought these leaves were pretty cool.

 Lily carefully looking inside the rock to determine if there was a snake inside (there wasn't).

 Another cool flower.

 The girls making their funny faces for the camera.

 After the greenhouse and a little walk through in the edible garden, we headed over the big bridge to the kids area.  Here the girls dug for dinosaur bones in the sand pit.

 Silly cuties.

 I love this little waterfall area.  On the other side of this path is a little pond with real (non-poisonous) frogs that were neat to see.

 The girls had a blast in the tree house.  For the longest time, it was just the two of them, so they had free range to run all around, climb, slide and explore.  It was great.  They played for a little while after some other kids came too, but then it was time to start heading back.

While making our way back, we stopped to see the bees making honey and play hopscotch on the rocks.  Just after crossing the bridge back to the gardens, a small snake slithered across the pavement right in front of us; that caused a little bit of excitement!

This was such a great morning.  I'm so glad to have my life back!